World's tallest tower in race to rise by 2008.

Nowhere is the "brave new world" of construction more exemplified than in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, a land where expatriates can now own property, and architects clamor for the chance to create one of the boxy superstructures along Sheik Zayed Road--locally nicknamed Refrigerator Row--which zips down the center of a vast expanse of Arabian desert.

Dubai based Emaar Properties inducted Chicago based Skidmore Owens and Merrill, LLP Architects, New York based Turner Construction and Korea based Samsung Corporation into the region's elite in early 2005 to build the Burj Dubai which they hope will become the world's tallest freestanding tower. Since then, the team has streamlined their process to help the skyscraper--which this month surpassed the Petronas Towers in Malaysia to gain the status of the world's second tallest building at 1535 feet--to surpass the current record holder Taiwan's Taipei 101 at 1671 feet by the end of 2008.

"Every time I think about the process of designing and building Burj Dubai, I feel like we just created a machine to put this tower together and make it work," said Ahmad Abdelrazaq, executive director of the high rise buildings and structural engineering divisions for Samsung, at the Skyscraper Museum sponsored forum held at 7 WTC. Abdelrazaq also played a key role in the early engineering design phases of the project with SOM.

If successful, the process may serve as a model for other builders who fast-track unprecedented projects both in New York City and the rest of the world, Abedelrazaq suggested.

The $1 billion mixed use skyscraper will be comprised of 160 stories of office and residential space, with a radio tower on top whose needling antennae will give the building the rest of its bragging rights at 2300 feet--putting it about 629 feet higher than the Taipei 101.

The design of the skyscraper is modeled after traditional dome-shaped Islamic architecture and the desert flower, and will be situated in the center of a $20 billion, 500-acre complex named Downtown Burj Dubai. This area will contain "the world's largest" entertainment and shopping mall, a man-made lagoon, landscaped gardens, more high rise buildings and traditional villas.

Burj Dubai's height--which will be approximately the equivalent of the Empire State Building with the Chrysler building stacked on top--required the engineers to devise a unique roving GPS system to pinpoint the absolute center of the building, and to register the building's reaction to wind. Over 700 sensors--or strain gauges--were embedded in the structure to react to changes and alert engineers if anything seems off kilter.

The building's shape was created to help it receive the wind and draw pressure off the building's foundation. This was achieved with a pattern of setbacks and winged platforms that spiral up the building to push air currents upwards and prevent tornado like vortexes from erupting in any portion of the building.

"Wind engineering was integrated into the architecture design from day one," Abdelrazaq said.

The bulk of the building is created out of reinforced concrete--a material which will break new ground on this project. Project managers logged many hours testing high performance grades of concrete, and curing it in the dry climate. Designers had to be particularly careful when utilizing the larger slabs of concrete as thick concrete can generate heat. To do so, they used a chiller plant, ice and often worked on the larger slabs at night when the temperatures are cooler.

SOM engineers wholeheartedly endorse the use of the material for skyscraper building.

"If skyscraper construction had stopped in 1990, one would say that the tallest skyscrapers are made of steel, built in the United States and are office buildings. Today, one would say that the tallest skyscrapers are built of concrete or composite, are erected in Asia or the Middle East and are likely to be residential," said William F. Baker, partner at SOM and the chief structural engineer of Burj Dubai.

The core of the construction machine was the workers. Up to 7000 construction workers continue to gather on the site every day to help ensure the aggressive three-day cycle of building runs like clockwork. The first day the steel is prefabricated on the ground level. On the second day, the forms are set into position and, on the third day, the concrete is poured into the forms and lifted in place. Three high pressure vertical pumpers snake up the building. The builders have already set a new world record for pushing concrete up to 1,670 feet and hope to push concrete directly up to the 160th story of the building during later phases of construction.

The building process has not veered far from the path it was set on at the onset of construction, where project managers determined the entire project could be complete in just 47 months.

Engineers are confident the structure will continue to hold up. When asked whether an even taller building than Burj Dubai was conceivable, Abdelrazaq responded:

"There is no structural reason a much taller building could not be built. As long as you can limit the pressure on the building's foundation, you can do it. This building is no different, pressure wise, than any other building out there.

The question of course becomes primarily one of money, and also you have to decide what kind of reaction people are going to have to a taller building you are proposing, what kind of comfort level people have and how tall a building the public is going to accept. But personally I think you can go much higher."