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Opinion: Monument to Excellence
I am not an architect, but I have read about the brilliant design and construction of Burj Dubai. I am struck by the similarities of architecture as a metaphor for a successful global economy and peaceful international relationships in the 21st century.
- PUBLISHED: Mon 4 Jan 2010, 12:05 PM UPDATED: Mon 6 Apr 2015, 2:21 PM
- By:
- Lanny J. Davis (burj Dubai)
As we know, the Burj Dubai Tower is by a good margin the tallest building in the world, the tallest free-standing building in the world, the tallest man-made structure in the world — 160 stories, 800 meters or 2,685 feet (more than one-half mile) in the air.
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Almost 45,000 cubic meters (59,000 cubic yards) of concrete, weighing more than 110,000 tons were used to construct the concrete and steel foundation, which features 192 piles buried more than 50 meters (164 feet) deep. Overall, the Burj Dubai will have used 330,000 cubic meters (431,6000 cubic yards) of concrete and 39,000 tons of steel rebar, with the construction taking more than 22 million man-hours.
The weight of its aluminum alone used in the construction is equivalent to five A380 aircraft and the total length of stainless steel built nose fins is 29 times the height of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Whereas the most famous and magnificent of Egyptian pyramids, at Giza, took 80 years to build, the Burj Dubai took six years from the beginning of excavation to the official launch ceremony today, at the dedication ceremony presided over by His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, and Ruler of Dubai.
The quantity of materials alone to build such a building and the logistics of raising the building — the supply, delivery, use, sequencing, application of engineering and design, project management, and organisation and management of thousands of workers — rivals mankind’s greatest engineering “wonders of the world,” such as India’s 17th century Taj Mahal or Egypt’s pyramids that were constructed nearly 5,000 years ago.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton saw the connection between today’s dedication of the Burj Dubai and tomorrow’s launch of The Dubai Forum, and the core prerequisites for a stable and peaceful world when she sent her greetings and salutations to His Highness Shaikh Mohammed, and wrote: “Your efforts to create international cooperation in the global economy is an important goal, and I wish you, my friend, the very best in this endeavour.”
Secretary Clinton’s reference to “international cooperation” is of course, metaphorically speaking, no different than the brilliantly conceived mutual dependence and relationships within the Burj Dubai that keeps it stable and enduring: a “triple-lobed footprint, an abstraction of the Hymenocallis flower, composed of three elements arranged around a central core. The modular, Y-shaped structure, with setbacks along each of its three wings, provides an inherently stable configuration for the 160-story structure….Twenty-six helical levels decrease the cross section of the tower incrementally as it spirals skyward.”
Similarly, without a multiple and diverse group of nations, with a central core based on cooperation and mutual support, the edifice of the global economic inter-related and inter-dependent economic infrastructure can be seriously de-stabilised.
We learned that when America’s real-estate melted down and credit markets froze in the spring, summer and fall of 2008, the ripple effects were virtually immediate and devastating, from the United Kingdom to France to Germany to eastern Europe to Russia to the Far East and, yes, to the Gulf States — and Dubai in particular.
The financial cycle of boom and speculative bubbles followed by crash and disaster followed by recovery and regaining balance has just happened…again…for the first time in the 21st century. But I dare say that the dreadful cycle will reoccur just as it happened in 1929 and most of the 1930s — a virus spreading from America’s Great Depression throughout Europe and most of the West.
With the impact of the revolution in telecommunications technologies in just the last twenty years, the increased globalisation of economic activities and instruments (in large part as a result these rapid advances in technology), we can now appreciate Secretary Clinton’s reference to the word “cooperation” in a much larger context. It is not just necessary. It is mandatory.
Whether it is the temporary economic distresses experienced in the United States, Europe, or the Middle East, we now all know that the answer is that we are all in this together. We have realised that cooperation and mutual respect and construction of national and international economic institutions to regulate the excesses of the speculative markets are among the more important lessons to be learned from the unpleasant develops of the last two years.
We can learn important lessons from real architecture — and from the Burj Dubai.
With planning and international cooperation, mutual respect among nations with different cultures, histories, religions, and traditions, we can achieve stability and security and a victory for civil society — no matter how mammoth and complex and different are the country-by-country economic infrastructures.
But we need that core — the core of civilized values of civil society — to make it work; and unity of purpose in the war against those who war against civilization and innocent civilians.
Lanny J. Davis is an attorney in the global law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery and specialises in the unique blend of law, media and communications, and political/public affairs strategies in the US and throughout the globe. He is the author, most recently of “Scandal: How ‘Gotha’ Politics’ Is Destroying America.”
