On Top of the World

Vita Sackville-West was depressed by Hillary and Norgay’s ascent to the peak of Everest, believing that there should be places on earth untrod by human feet. How would she have liked the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai? I am afraid that she would be horrified, although this Burj is by far Dubai’s most beautiful building, hopefully now distracting attention from the horrible Burj Arab Hotel. Many people would like to ask God if he regrets Dubai, but now that we can ride the 800 metres plus to the top of Burj Khalifa and look at it from His vantage point perhaps we can see that he might like it the way it is, by night at least.

7 thoughts on “On Top of the World

  1. Tom Turner

    What a marvellous set of photographs – could you supply some more details of what they show? I agree with Vita Sackville-West about Mount Everest, though I did not know it was her opinion. She would be pleased to learn that Mount Kailash has never been climbed – because it is regarded as the home of the gods and therefore sacred in the sense of set apart. I find it particularly grisly that Mt Everest is littered with dead bodies as well as the normal detritus of a climbing expedition. Vita might also join me in asking people not to visit Sissinghurst Castle Garden.

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    1. Lawrence Post author

      The middle photo is looking NNE, in the middle of the picture is “The Index” a mixed use, 80 storey tower 328 m high by Foster and Partners, containing among other things the highest apartment in the world. To the left of this building is the famous Sheikh Zayed Road, lined on both sides by towers, many of which are embarassingly awful. The lower photo is looking SE and shows the many undeveloped areas of the mega-project “Downtown Burj Dubai“, of which Burj Khalifa is itself a part. The completed building we are looking down on is a hotel “The Address”, 63 storeys, 306 m high, 6th tallest building in Dubai and 36th tallest in the world.
      I think that VS-W wrote about Everest in one of her Observer garden articles, the collected volume of which I don’t have to hand to check.

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  2. Tom Turner

    Thank you. One can’t judge too much from photographs but I have not yet seen an image which makes me think the Burj Khalifa beautiful – and I have often heard it compared to ‘a giant hypodermic syringe’. Is it a matter of scale? I daresay Everest would not be much admired at a millionth of its present size.

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    1. Lawrence Post author

      The further away one is, the better Burj Khalifa looks. I find that it has added a poignant element to the Dubai skyline, much as St. Pauls must have done for London at the time of its construction. Buildings of this nature are as much expressions of man’s sense of his own impermanence on earth as they are demonstrations of power and as such Burj Khalifa has lent Dubai a poetry that it was formerly lacking. As a matter of taste, I find the diminishing dimensions of the rising tower very elegant, the appreciation of this elegance diminishing, as I say, the closer one gets to the base.

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  3. Christine

    Tom I believe you have hit the kernel of the issue here…with the Burj Khalifa it is not a question of beauty but a question of size. The building is flexing its technological might….the triumph of the tallest! (And yes this race to be the tallest building on the block has probably been happening since the Tower of Babel.)

    Of course the views from the tower are another question…the new perspective a tall building allows if you can cope with the vertigo and other physiological phenomena is always tantalising.

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  4. Tom Turner

    It may the case that ALL big views are GOOD views, and that the bigger they are the better they are. So one of the objectives for city planners should be to create BIG VIEWS.

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  5. Tom Turner

    Putting my tongue in my cheek, I can’t help asking it it looks best of all when it is completely out of sight.
    Re distant- and close-views, Camillo Sitte observed that the European cathedrals inspired more awe when surrounded by close-packed medieval buildings than when these were cleared away to make cathedral squares. The Dom Plaz in Cologne is an example, though I know the RAF had a hand in clearing the buildings. Naples is a fine example of a city where the great churches are not surrounded by piazzas. In London, the Canary Wharf tower is also worst from below and best from afar.

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