Emaar won't build tower taller than Burj Khalifa: Chairman

Emaar Properties isn’t going out replicate its successful Downtown Dubai model anywhere in the emirate, ruling out plans to build a tower higher than 828-metre Burj Khalifa.

“Our Downtown is the Downtown,” said Emaar Chairman Mohamed Alabbar told Emirates 24|7 when asked if the company was planning to replicate the Downtown Dubai plan in other mega projects being built in the emirate.

“We will never build a tall building like this (Burj Khalifa) so Downtown will always remain the Downtown,” he said.

The Dubai-listed developer is jointly developing multi-billion-dollar Mohammad Bin Rashid City and a mega project in Dubai World Central, the home to Expo 2020 and the Al Maktoum International Airport.

The multi-billion-dollar Mohammad Bin Rashid City was announced in November 2012 and is being jointly developed by Emaar and Meraas Holding. Comprising four key components, the new city will focus on family tourism, retail, arts and entrepreneurship. It will have over 100 hotel facilities and “Mall of the World”, which will the largest mall in the world.

In joint venture with Dubai World Central (DWC), the world's first purpose-built aerotropolis, the developer is building an integrated urban centre and golf destination within DWC. Spread over an area of 13.63 million square metres, the project will include a golf-course villa community, several hotels, a high-end shopping mall, leisure attractions, and a business hub that promotes youth entrepreneurship.

“If human beings have brain they will add more interesting things… then here is so much to do,” Alabbar added.

Last year, Emaar Chairman said Dubai could accommodate a tower taller than Burj Khalifa.

In fact, William Baker, a structural engineer at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill who worked with Adrian Smith on designing the system that allowed Burj Khalifa to be built, went on record to say that the buttressed core design of Burj Khalifa can be used to build structures taller than it.

The one-kilometre-high Kingdom Tower, currently under construction, is set to become the world’s tallest by 2017-2018.

Not only housing the world’s tallest tower, Dubai also holds the record for the tallest residential tower (Princess Tower), the tallest hotel in the world (JW Marriott Marquis) and the tallest building with a 90degree twist (Cayan Tower).

Emporis, a global provider of building information, data reveals that Dubai has 909 high-rise buildings, including 448 skyscrapers (comprising 40 floors or more).

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