Burj Dubai, a super-tall skyscraper

Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper now being built in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, by Samsung Corp. Samsung, its primary builder, says the building has reached a height of 630 meters, the world’s highest man-made structure. Its construction will be completed next year. / Yonhap

Burj Dubai, a super-tall skyscraper under construction in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, by Samsung Corp., will set a milestone as the world's tallest artificial structure today.

The building will reach a height of 630 meters today, 38 months after its groundbreaking, the construction unit of Samsung Corp. said Monday. The company also built the two other huge skyskrapers ? the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia and Taipei 101 in Taiwan.

The structure's top 160th floor was completed on March 25 and now its spire is being built. Its projected height will be over 800 meters.

After completion, the building will set a few more world records such as the building with most floors, volume of vertical concrete pumping and one with the fastest elevator moving up and down at speeds of 18 meters per second. Last September, the building became the world's loftiest freestanding structure on land surpassing the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada.

Before Burj Dubai, the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota, United States, was the world's tallest structure at 628.8 meters as the Warsaw radio mast in Poland, which had held the record at 646.4 meters, collapsed in 1991.

Seated in a 480,000 square meter land, Burj Dubai consists of a luxury hotel with 39 floors, a 108-story apartment complex and an office section and will be the centerpiece of a large-scale, multi-use district in Dubai.

The structure, designed after the shape of a desert flower and featuring traditional Islam architectural styles, is due to be completed next year. It is 56 times bigger than Seoul's Jamsil Sports Complex in size and three times taller than Mount Namsan.

Burj Dubai is resistant to earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or higher, and also winds of up to 36 meters per second.

By Kim Hyun-cheol Staff Reporter The Korea Times