Construction Projects

Construction Projects

Construction Projects

Introduction

The study of buildings and their social meanings has been a popular academic pastime. Architectural history, in particular, has a long history within universities and usually seeks to explain the motivations of particular architectural movements and building types, through a careful consideration of their formal properties (their scale, materials, use of space and light, etc.). Skyscrapers are buildings that are particularly high and continuously habitable. No doubt the skyscrapers represent a very important edge of architecture and building today (Landau, 1996, 15-63). Full of symbolism, are usually located in the cities that somehow encapsulate the economic power, Hong Kong, Dubai, New York, Shanghai and Singapore are just a few. This paper will discuss and compare similar construction projects namely Burj Khalifa, Burj Milad and Taipei 101 that are located in different countries and environments (Ábalos, 2003, 89-111).

Skyscrapers act as central symbolic structures, as landmarks, which orient citizens. They come to symbolize the changing histories of cities, just as cathedrals and castles dominated cities of past times. Given the complexity and contingencies of global flows, it is ironic that many of the metaphors, adjectives and tropes used to represent and talk about the skyscraper emphasize fixity, solidity, rootedness and permanence (Douglas. 2006, 9-36).

Discussion

The Burj Khalifa is the skyscraper located in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). Until the inauguration of the building it was called Burj Dubai, since it stands the name of the President of the United Arab Emirates (Willis, 2005, 106-35). The Burj Khalifa was by the project company Emaar Properties, designed by architect Adrian Smith from the American architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Since April 2008 this is the tallest building in the world, construction of this skyscraper began in 2004, in January 2009; the final height of 828 meters was reached. Burj Khalifa is part of a vast urban, architectural and real estate covering an area of 2 km2. It is about creating a new district, Downtown Burj Khalifa, just south of the historic center of Dubai, and next to the coastal district of Jumeirah, but located a few miles inland. This area should include, in addition to the skyscrapers of the same name, an artificial lake and many large buildings. In all, it provides a set of 30,000 homes, nine hotels, including 19 residential towers, the largest mall in the world, Dubai Mall, and the artificial lake of 12 hectares Burj Lake (Willis, 2005, 121-23).

Within such buildings, the rather crude 'global-local' construct recurs frequently as practitioners and critics alike seek to interpret the uneasy interplay of standardised building production systems, centuries of indigenous design history and relatively distinct modes of living and working (Bowden, 2005, 75-109). However, by contrast the skyscraper Taipei 101, constructed in Taipei in early 2004, it is 509 m high and has 101 floors with five levels of basement. This was the tallest building in the world until March 27 2008, when the Burj Khalifa, in turn became the tallest building in the world, with 162 floors and ...