burj dubai height

After a disastrous end to 2009 for Dubai investors, the sun-soaked emirate will be attracting attention for all the right reasons today as it officially opens the world's tallest building.
The Burj Dubai tower, a needle-shaped skyscraper which stands more than 800 metres tall and can be seen from 95 kilometres away, will stand as a gleaming testament to Dubai's glory days before the recession ground its construction industry to a halt.
Boasting the world's first Armani hotel on the bottom floors, the Burj Dubai Tower also houses 900 Dubai residences, 37 floors of office space, a fine dining restaurant and an observation deck.

High life: The Burj Dubai stands at 160 stories tall and is the tallest building in the world
The structure easily surpasses its closest rivals, the KVLY-TV mast in Blanchard in North Dakota, U.S, which measures a lofty 628 metres-high and the Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower in China, which falls short at 610 metres.
The Burj Dubai - literally meaning 'Tower Dubai' - brings records galore to the UAE. As well as being the tallest building in the world, it also has the most stories and highest occupied floor of any building in the world, and ranks as the world's tallest structure. Visitors can look out from the highest observation deck in the world on the 124th floor.
"We weren't sure how high we could go," said Bill Baker, the building's structural engineer. "It was kind of an exploration...a learning experience."
The tower itself is reported to have cost $1.5 billion - £925 million - and the owners report that nearly 100 per cent of the apartments are sold out. However, the majority of the building's office space has not been taken up and the hotel is not actually finished yet.