There are three seismic fault zones in the UAE area, although Dubai itself is thought to be at low risk because of its particular soil structure. Yet if I were enjoying the view from, say, the 140th floor, I would not be able to help musing with a frisson of alarm that the geologically unstable Iran was not too far away. Indeed, minor tremors are often felt in Dubai…
There are other daunting technological and practical problems with such a building. Aerospace engineers will imagine the most horrible thing that could possibly happen to a wing and then design it to withstand several times as much force. But aerospace engineers are working in an older technological tradition than designers of supertall buildings: certainly, the tapering profile of Burj Khalifa helps diminish the effect of the wind, but variables and unknown unknowns remain. We have only small knowledge of how such an extreme structure responds to wind-induced dynamic torque…
Paradoxically, Burj Khalifa is not a truly modern building. It is a hangover of a demented spending binge. It is a subprime Great Pyramid. It is queasy nostalgia for a version of the future that looked old-fashioned a generation ago. It is kitsch retro fantasia, a glassy memorial to something not so much forgotten as never known.
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