Quotes of the Day

Greg Sang, a 41-year-old civil engineer from New Zealand, is in a hurry. In the 110 degrees F (43 degrees C) heat outside his site office, he tosses me a white hard hat and, leaving me sweating and struggling to keep up, strides briskly toward the base of the Burj Dubai, the soaring skyscraper he's in charge of building. Riding together in a jangling construction elevator, it takes us 3 min. 50 sec. to ascend to the giddy heights of the 104th floor — and the building's reach for the sky won't stop there. At the current rate, says Sang, his laborers — some 4,000 construction workers, mainly from the Indian subcontinent — are adding a new story every three days. At that pace, the Burj Dubai will this week surpass Taipei 101, a 1,666-ft. (508-m) tower in Taiwan, to become the world's tallest building. When I remark how startlingly fast the Burj Dubai is rising, Sang replies simply: "Why go slow?"

Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, would appreciate Sang's relentless sense of purpose. Under the leadership of the Sheik, who told developer Emaar Properties to go for 160 stories rather than the planned 90, this former backwater of Bedouin and Persian Gulf traders is rapidly being transformed into the Middle East's Hong Kong — a glitzy global hub for doing business, having fun and ... well, constructing a lot of tall buildings.

Designed by the Chicago architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merill as an apartment complex, Giorgio Armani Hotel and office space, the Burj Dubai combines the slimness of a needle with the layered look of a wedding cake. It aspires to be very 21st century, with its sleek, mirror-sided height, while also paying homage to traditional Dubai culture through its elegant curvature inspired by Arabic writing. Above all, though, it is intended as a triumphant statement — to Arabia and beyond — of Dubai's towering ambitions. While the Burj Dubai's ultimate height is a closely guarded secret, Sang says it will go "at least" to 2,300 ft. (700 m) — and higher, apparently, if any competitor is crazy enough to try to top it.

Peering out from the 104th floor, I can see several other symbols of Dubai, a city-state roughly the size of Mallorca, with only about 250,000 citizens and 1 million or so foreign workers. The most famous is the Burj al Arab, a splendid, sail-shaped luxury hotel as high as the Eiffel Tower. When Sang points toward the hazy waters of the Gulf and says, "That's the World out there," it takes me a second to realize he's not referring to our planet, but to yet another huge real estate development. The World will be a collection of luxury resorts and private estates built on man-made islands that replicate the earth's continents.

These projects don't quite measure up for Sang, a skyscraper enthusiast whose last job was at Two International Finance Centre, Hong Kong's tallest building. "When a skyscraper gets to a certain height, it becomes an icon and the city becomes very proud of it," he says. "The Burj Dubai is a sign of the level of activity, imagination and efficiency, and of the can-do attitude here in Dubai."

Not everyone is dazzled. Rashid Taqui, editor of Dubai's Architecture Plus magazine, argues that the Burj Dubai's height and its location adjoining a busy shopping mall puts it at odds with its environment. "Burj Dubai is iconic, it's great, it does what it's trying to do," says Taqui, himself the architect of Dubai's minimalist Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa. "What it does for Dubai and how it evolves Dubai is a different question altogether. We're building a visionary city, but where's the vision in all this?"

For now, Sang is engrossed in the more practical matter of finishing his building. Before he rushes off, I ask if he'll break out the champagne when it becomes the world's tallest skyscraper. "I don't think there will be anything in particular; it'll be another day in the office," he says. And then he returns to the job of building this dizzying monument to the rise of Dubai.

• Scott MacLeod
• Our intrepid reporter ventures to the 104th floor of the Burj Dubai, which is poised to become the tallest skyscraper ever built — and the pride of this city-state. On top of the world