Burj Dubai Reaches Maximum Height

The tallest structure in the world, the Burj Dubai, has topped out with the pinnacle having now been pushed up to the maximum height by builders from Samsung Engineering & Construction.

It is an event that should have hailed a brave new world for Dubai, but with the growing economic storm clouds in the background and Barack Obama's presidential inauguration overshadowing it, will it prove as a last gasp for world prestige?

The official height for the building now measures an enormous 818 metres to the top of the spire or 826 metres if you want to measure the height from the lower entrance, and then throw in another metre if you care to count the aircraft beacon on the very tip.

Putting this in perspective, that will make the Burj Dubai only 149 metres shorter than the tallest "mountain" in the whole of England, Scafell Pike, and this is a man made structure.

The project also has a primary concrete structure 601 metres tall, 192 foundation piles sunk up to 50 metres deep to support the weight, and 39,000 tonnes of steel rebar.

Despite this triumph, things are not going entirely to plan for the developer Emaar which has seen slumping property values in the building, and thanks to falling business confidence around it mass redundancies at firms that were designing other buildings, many of the planned towers that would accompany the Burj Dubai, not to mention the landscaping to make the area more attractive, are unlikely to surface for the foreseeable future.

The real question on everyone's lips is whether the Burj Dubai's topping out will act as the phoenix rising from the ashes or is it going to be nothing more than a glorious folly for a Middle Eastern emirate, that like Icarus flew too close to the sun and lost it's feathers.