World's Tallest, Most Expensive Fountain In Sparkling Action

As you would expect, the world's tallest fountain is in Dubai. As you would expect, it's next to the world's tallest building. And as you would expect, it's as naff as everything else in there. More »

Cleaning the Tallest Building In the World Requires High Pressure Water Guns and Balls

Things in Dubai get dirty pretty fast thanks to the desert. But how the heck do you clean the 2,683-foot Burj Dubai? What about a window-cleaning SWAT team rappelling down its surface with high pressure water guns. [Thanks Gerard]

Travel Through Dubai at 818mph

After the futuristic Dubai, here is the real Dubai as seen in high-speed from its new metro, inaugurated on September 9. Impressive, in a New York and Miami get drunk and have a bastard child kind of way. [Thanks Gerald]

How Would Dubai Look In the Future?

Ah Dubai, you and your glittery airports and your insane skyscrapers and your Death Star islands. If you don't fall into the desert first, this is how you may look in the future. More »

British Airways' Last Concorde May Become Dubai Novelty

It's like those sci-fi rich guys who collect everything including somebody's frozen head, only it's real: Dubai collectors—possibly the same ones turning the QE2 ocean liner into a hotel—are trying to buy BA's last Concorde. More »

Even Illustrious Dubai Is Suffering a Devastating Real Estate Crash

With the world in financial peril, it seemed like Dubai, home of 200 new skyscrapers built in the last five years, could have enough hype to be immune. But such is not the case. More »

Dubai Hotelier Hasn't Heard of Flip-Flops, Plans to Refrigerate Entire Beach

There's nothing like a good bit of Dubai excess, but this just isn't impressive enough to justify the profligacy: the Palazzo Versace hotel is building a beach with refrigerated sand. More »

Two Guys Jumped Off the Burj Dubai and Lived to Tell About It

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Dubai's Newest Insane Skyscraper to House a Restaurant in a Glass Pod at 2,150 Feet

Oh look, another insane tower planned for Dubai! This one is dubbed the Anara Tower, and while it's not going to be the tallest in the world (it'll be about 500 feet shorter than the Burj Dubai at 2,150 feet), it's still incredible all on its own. More »

The Plans for the 1.55-Mile-High Skyscraper in, You Guessed It, Dubai

Forget the 3,280 feet-high 200-floor Nakheel Tower because it's no longer going to be the highest skyscraper in the world. The new upcoming beast is this amazing 1.55-mile-high skyscraper planned for the Jumeirah City project in Dubai. The building is so tall that its main elevator is in fact a vertical 125mph bullet train. This city-in-a-skyscraper will consume 37,000MWH/year, with a 15MW peak usage, but as the plans show, it has been designed to generate most of it using wind, thermal, and solar power: More »

The Highest Skyscraper in the World

When it's finished in ten years, Dubai's latest architectural monolith will be the tallest skyscraper in the world. At more than one kilometer high (3,280 feet), the Nakheel Tower will have around two hundred floors. Like always, the company behind the project is very secretive about the actual size of the leviathan, in order to beat other buildings for as long as possible, but you can see how it compares to Burj Dubai and other the rest of giant towers here: More »

Real Sim City Comes to Life in the Desert

Yesterday's images of the almost-finished Burj Dubai blew our minds with its scale and grandiosity. Today, reader David Hobcote zooms out his Canon 1Ds Mark III on board a Bell heli to show us the current state of some of Dubai's new landmarks, including the stunning New Atlantis Hotel and the first house constructed on one of The World's artificial islands. Yes, it looks like a new Sim City running in a PlayStation 3. More »

Massive Dubai Fountain Will Be the Largest, Most Technologically Advanced Water Works of its Kind

In Dubai, they're doing things big these days. Big hotels, big palm tree islands, big wallets, and very soon, big $281 million fountains. The biggest one in the world, in fact, and it will be large enough to give the famed fountains at the Bellagio in Las Vegas an inferiority complex. More »

Zaha Hadid's Dubai Opera House Design Makes Me See Cylon Raiders

I'm just wondering if British architect Zaha Hadid is a Battlestar Galactica fan. It seems so, as her design for the Dubai Opera House is reminiscent of those croissant-shaped fighters that zing through space, facing down Starbuck et al. The development will go up on an island in Dubai Creek, and as well as hosting an auditorium with room for 2,500 people to hear fat ladies singing, it will house an 800-seat playhouse, arts gallery, performing arts school and six-star themed hotel. [Dezeen] More »

Long Island To Get 35-Story Indoor Ski Resort, Doubles as Villain's Lair

For some, it’s more police. For others, it’s better traffic management. For Riverhead Resorts, though, what Long Island needs more than anything else is a 35-story man-made ski resort. As you could easily imagine, a few (read: lots and lots) of people aren’t too happy about the two billion dollar proposal, but the concept is stunning. More »

Burj Dubai Becomes World's Tallest Man-Made Structure Today

As of today, the Burj Dubai skyscraper in the Middle East stands at 650 meters, and here's a diagram found on the SkyscraperCity forums, comparing it to all the other towers. The construction has finally surpassed the current tallest man-made structure, the Warsawa radio mast in Poland, which stands at 646 meters. Only another 169 meters to go before the tip of the aircraft beacon is up, then. Clicky for bigger. [SkyscraperCity—thanks, Brian]

Dubai Taking More Cues From Failed Movies By Sinking Money Into Floating Islands in the Shape of Letters

Just when we thought Dubai couldn't make more absurd architectural decisions, they go and commission a Dutch dude to make floating islands in the shape of Arabic letters that spell out a part of a poem. This floater of an idea has been tried before, albeit on a smaller scale with cruise ship terminals, mosques and a beach. What's the point of this other than to push the insanity envelope even further? The ability to rise up or down depending on how sea levels are going in the next few decades (they're going up). [NPR] More »

Emirates Air In-Flight Showers Cost $18,000 (Plus Enviro Guilt?)

Starting October 1, if you're flying first class from Dubai to New York on an Emirates Air A380, you'll have the option of grabbing a hot shower midflight. It'll cost you $18,000, but some showers are worth it, am I right? "No!" say those party poopers in the environmental lobby. More »

Emirates the First Airline to Allow Inflight Calls from Passenger Cellphones

Dubai-based airline Emirates has claimed the first ever permitted mobile phone call from a commercial flight. The conversations took place aboard a Casablanca-bound Airbus A340 that had been kitted out with a system that stops cellphones from messing with the plane's electronics. By the end of the year its passengers will be able to clack away on their BlackBerries and use other data services, such as sending texts. Calls on night flights will not be allowed, and the crews will be allowed to prohibit yakking whenever they feel like it. The only stipulation is that cell users, who can only make calls when at cruising height keep their phones switched to silent—thank God—during flights. [BBC Online]

Infinity Tower to Twist by 90º Over Dubai Marina

For the record, I would like to state that I'm really bored of these outsized erections popping up all over the Arabian Peninsula. This one is going up in the Dubai Marina. It's called the Infinity Tower (because that is how long it seems that we have been covering these giant penile substitutes that are currently littering the Middle East) and its USP is that it twists 90º. This is the blurb on the 1,000-foot, 80-story, twisted monstrosity. More »

Dubai Building World's Largest, Tallest, Most Futuregasmic Arch Bridge Next Month

Dubai is the Tetsuo of cities, expanding so fast it's on the verge of creating of its own universe. And architecture that looks like it's from the 22nd century only adds to the sheer grandeur of its growth—this bridge, envisioned by NY architecture firm Fxfowle, will be the largest and tallest arch bridge in the world, at one mile long and 670 feet tall. Construction starts next month and is due to wrap up in 2012 after running some $817 million dollars. World's first vacuum tube mass transit system will launch in Dubai shortly thereafter. [World Architecture News via io9]

Five Undersea Cables Cut So Far

In this strange maritime epidemic, the number of undersea cables cut in incidents around the Middle East and South Asia now totals five, including Sea-Me-We 4 (in two places) and cables run by Flag Telecom located at Alexandria, the Dubai coast, and Bandar Abbas in Iran. (Insert not-so-funny-anymore Dick Cheney terror joke here.) [Khaleej Times via Slashdot]

A Robotic Jurassic Park Coming to Dubai

When it comes to Dubai and attracting wealthy tourists, the word "restraint" is seldom used. Perhaps that is why it is not surprising that the locals are building a $1 billion theme park that will feature over 100 animatronic dinosaurs of 40 different species. Dubbed "Restless Planet," the park will attempt to provide an educational experience amid all of the Vegas-style spectacle. This will be done using history themed rides and robots/habitats that represent an accurate portrayal (based on current knowledge) of what life was like millions of years ago. More »

The World's Tallest Building Has a Hell of a View

Not so long ago, our own Addy Dugdale showed us the Burj Dubai, what will be the world's tallest building of any kind when finished. Discovery Channel show "Really Big Things" got a slightly better view as the first camera crew allowed on top the building. And what can we say? It's high up there at 137 stories. And only 2/3 of the building is done. And Dubai is freakin' insane. [thedubailife]

The Tallest Building in the World Looks Like a Stack of Pringles

On our blink-and-you'll-miss-it visit to the world's largest building site, aka Dubai, we stopped for a gawk at this, the Burj Dubai. Currently the tallest structure in the world, it stands at 156 stories and 585 meters high, but is expected to reach around 800 meters when finished. Designed by Adrian Smith, the tower continues the Armani-Samsung love-in, as the Italian designer is putting his name to a sexy hotel, while the Korean mega-corp is one of the three constructors on the skyscraper. But the cruelest cut of all is that Burj Dubai (burj means "tower" in Arabic) will be dwarfed by Kuwait's Burj Mubarak Al-Kabir, which will measure 1,001 meters (3,284 feet) when it is ready. But that's not expected to be until 2012 so, until then, size queens will be eyeing up Dubai. [Burj Dubai]

Diamond Card...Actually Made of Diamonds

Smart Card maker GK Power has been contracted by Dubai First Bank to produce 1,000 diamond-packing credit cards for their most affluent clients. While the deal cost the bank $175,000 just in materials, we're more interested in the conversation when some guy loses his card. More »