Burj Khalifa, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Burj Khalifa (Arabic: برج خليفة‎, “Khalifa Tower”), is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and is the tallest man-made structure in the world, at 829.8 m (2,722 ft). Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009. The building officially opened on 4 January 2010, and is part of the new 2 km² development called Downtown Dubai at the ‘First Interchange’ along Sheikh Zayed Road, near Dubai’s main business district. The tower’s architecture and engineering were performed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill of Chicago, with Adrian Smith as chief architect, and Bill Baker as chief structural engineer. The primary contractor was Samsung C&T of South Korea.

Burj Khalifa was designed to be the centerpiece of a large-scale, mixed-use development that would include 30,000 homes, nine hotels (including The Address Downtown Dubai), 3 hectares of parkland, at least 19 residential towers, the Dubai Mall, and the 12-hectare man-made Burj Khalifa Lake. The building has returned the location of Earth’s tallest freestanding structure to the Middle East, where the Great Pyramid of Giza had claimed this achievement for almost four millennia before being surpassed in 1311 by Lincoln Cathedral in England. The decision to build Burj Khalifa is reportedly based on the government’s decision to diversify from an oil based economy to one that is service and tourism based.

1. The above information was edited from the Wikipedia article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa