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29 March 2024

Dubai's twisted tower among world's top 10 best skyscrapers

Cayan Tower in Dubai Marina, formerly known as Infinity Tower (Imre Solt)

Published
By Parag Deulgaonkar

Cayan Tower, the world's tallest tower featuring a 90-degree twist, has been placed among the world's top 10 skyscrapers built in 2013.

The 310-metre-high, 75-storey tower, built at the cost of Dh1 billion, is located in Dubai Marina - tallest block in the world -that is home the three tallest residential towers in the world.



Designed by Burj Khalifa architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Khatib & Alami, Cayan Tower was placed fourth on the list of top 10 tall towers - more than 100 metres in height - by Emporis, a German-based firm that maintains a database of the world's buildings.

"The building's twisted shape reduces wind forces on the tower and channels the wind in such a way that its forces are unable to organise themselves," Emporis said in a statement.

Cayan Group, the developer of the tower, has no plans to replicate the tower elsewhere in the world, company Chairman Ahmed M Al Hatti had told Emirates 24|7 in June 2013.

Work started on the tower in 2006 while completion was in 2013.

This website revealed earlier that the tower, previously called Infinity Tower, was the only tower in the emirate that had to pay to buy airspace due to its design.

"Due to the rotation of the building some of the façade is hanging over, which means that in this building some of the façade is outside the footprint of the building," Dr Montasser El Raie, Senior Resident Engineer, Khatib & Alami, project consultant's for the tower, told this website.

(Read: Dubai's World's tallest twisted tower buys airspace)

The Shard, London's 306 metre high tower, took the first prize, beating entries from designers of over 300 skyscrapers around the world.

The building, designed by architect Renzo Piano, won due to its unique glass fragment-shaped form and its sophisticated architectural implementation.

"Construction of The Shard was complicated by the particularly tight site and therefore needed innovative planning. This makes the result all the more impressive: a skyscraper that is recognised immediately and which is already considered London's new emblem," the expert jury said.

Austria's DC Tower 1 in Vienna, a 250-metre tall skyscraper, took the second prize, while China's Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort in Huzhou took the third position.

Cayan Tower facts

The tower is 310-metre high and has 75 storeys It has 495 apartments (studios to penthouses) Construction started in 2006 and was finished in 2013 It has seven high-speed lifts (eight metres per second) It has six underground basements Total steel reinforcement grade used is 25,000 tonnes Depth of excavation is 27 metres.