No, size DOESN'T matter! At 160 storeys high it's the world's tallest (and most pointless) building.....and guess what, it was designed by a man




And so we have it. The world’s tallest tower — a 160-storey-high hotel, apartment complex and office building all rolled into one. At half-a-mile from tip to toe, it’s the tallest man-made structure ever built.

Only in Dubai. And only . . . designed by a man.

In truth, it’s not really surprising that the world’s tallest building — the Burj Dubai — is in Dubai, since it is not only a city of mores, but a city of ‘biggests’, ‘bests’ and ‘firsts’.



Nor should it have taken us aback that the architect — Adrian Smith, most famous for the Trump International Hotel & Tower — is most assuredly male.

Dubai boasts more than 100 buildings taller than 590ft. If architecture is a playground for male vanity, what’s a man to do if his neighbours are all taller than him — other than to get his dad to build him some stilts?

A number of the higher floors - up to the 160th - have been designated as office space, while there is a restaurant on the 122nd floor and a gym, with an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, on the 123rd floor - some 1,440 feet off the ground

Also due to launch this year in Moscow and Dubai are the ultimate testament to male vanity, David Fisher’s Dynamic Towers.

The 70- and 80-storey-high Dynamic Towers will be the world’s first moving skyscrapers (they have independently rotating floors). They also come with facilities to park cars on each floor.

Wow. What an achievement. Ladies, be sure to form an orderly queue . . . But what prompts men to build such tall buildings? Do we ever talk about the world’s best building? The most functional? The building least likely to get dusty — or (even more usefully) fall over in an earthquake?

No, it’s the structures that rise the most arrogantly over their neighbours, or that can be seen from space, that get the biggest applause.

Whether they’re aesthetically pleasing or not doesn’t actually seem to have any relevance any more. Of course, high-rises have a utilitarian value in places where space is at a premium — but let’s not for a moment kid ourselves that the vast majority of these stairways to heaven are motivated by function.

Perhaps, in the end, it stands to evolutionary reason: man wants to be the highest.



an is genetically predisposed to building citadels and castles on hills. In short, man is pre-programmed with an inbuilt desire to dominate.

You have to feel sorry for the architects. Maybe they go into their meetings with a beautiful, utilitarian and energy-efficient structure — but then that special someone (charged with both a clipboard and the decision-making) frowns and says: ‘Hmm — but can you see it from space? Could you stick a spike on the top? Could it be, well, bigger?’

A restaurant sits on the 122nd floor and a gym, with an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, can be found upstairs on the 123rd floor – some 1,440 feet off the ground A couple of years ago I stood, trembling, atop Melbourne’s Eureka Tower, then hailed as the world’s tallest residential building (when measured to its tallest floor), shortly before its official opening.



My (female) friend and I had been led up the 91-storey building in a lift by two men who had been technical workers on the project — and clearly beside themselves at what they clearly considered to be their achievement.

‘How many rooms does the tower have?’ I remember asking.



‘Oh I don’t know. But it really doesn’t matter, does it, because what’s most interesting is that it’s really, really tall. Are you scared looking down? Feeling a bit queasy? You must be. . .’

The fact that their underlying inquiry was not so much a reflection of their gentlemanly concern, but more a thinly veiled ‘And does the fact we helped build it perhaps make you fancy us a bit more?’ was not lost on either of us.

Our new would-be suitors subsequently led us to the edge of the glass structure and urged us to look down.

You can picture the scene: two giggling women (who, frankly, were old enough to have known better than to pander to such overtures of machismo) gripping their escorts’ manly arms — and gasping with delight at the sheer size of their, er, ‘achievement’. It’s an all-too-familiar story.

After all, things don’t get much more aspirational — or more fulsomely ‘male’ — than the UK’s tallest building, César Pelli’s One Canada Square. It has 50 floors and is 800ft high, and comes complete with a tapered tip and bulging sides.

Guests watched in awe at the opening ceremony, which took place despite the building not yet being finished inside

The Burj was designed to show off Dubai's new wealth and industrial might

César Pelli, of course, is also responsible for the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the largest twin buildings in the world.

In the ‘flesh’ (I’ve been there, too — and am ashamed to say that once again I trembled like a girl), the towers are an impressive, shimmering, metallic double monument — nay homage — to so-called ‘manliness’. And when I say manliness, I’m sure there’s no need to spell out precisely what it is that I am alluding to.

Blast-off: the spectacular fireworks display at the Burj reaches its climax Dubai’s government obviously hopes the Burj Dubai will be the key to the revitalisation of the country’s economy — which is currently $100billion in debt. That’s the ticket, boys: when you’re in huge hock, why not build a really massive folly, costing billions of dollars that you simply don’t have? It’s a bit like saying: ‘Darling, I’ve just realised that we are thousands of pounds overdrawn — why don’t we get out a massive loan and get another floor added to our home so that everyone can see just how massive our house is?

‘Then all our friends and neighbours will envy us and they won’t notice that we don’t have any money because we’ll be really, really big.’

‘But darling, we have no money — and what use is a really big house?’



‘Oh, no use whatsoever, my love, but everyone will see us and talk about us and want to visit us.’

Which was, seemingly, not a million miles away from the thinking (or lack thereof) that went on in Dubai.

The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, led a day of celebrations to unveil the self-congratulatory edifice, and the tower’s first inhabitants will move into their couldn’t-get-more-macho- Giorgio Armani-designed pads in February. The Armani hotel will open in March.

I can’t help reflecting on the very different approach that female architects adopt when it comes to designing their buildings.

Consider the work of UK architect Zaha Hadid, whose work is famed for its amorphous lines and innovative use of space. Her BMW factory in Leipzig is a sleek, curved structure of beauty and usefulness.

And what about her Chinese counterpart Maya Lin, who blends modern and traditional building methods — and whose designs are universally acknowledged to be both understated and sleek?

In all this excitement over sheer size, I can’t help but recollect the work of Anna Keichline. Chances are you haven’t heard of her. Keichline was the first woman to become a registered architect of Pennsylvania. In 1924, she patented a kitchen design that included sloped countertops and glass-doored cabinets.



Then, in 1929, she patented a design for a space-saving bed that folded away into the wall. Both useful, both of intrinsic value. But her most famous invention was the creation of the K Brick in 1927.

A precursor to the modern concrete block, the K Brick was a hollow, fireproof clay brick that was both cheaper and lighter than other building bricks. It could be filled with insulating or soundproof material and was designed for hollow wall construction.

The reason you haven’t heard of her? Probably because, just as now, there was very little mileage in headlines that screamed ‘Understated woman designs REALLY practical kitchen, which will influence interior design for centuries to come’ or ‘It’s not really massive and you can’t park your top-of-the-range Bugatti in it — but the K Brick is really very useful, you know’.

I don’t want to come over all Germaine Greer on the subject of high-rises, but the fact remains that if a woman had been charged with designing a building to revolutionise Dubai’s economy, the celebration of her vanity might not have been quite so high on her agenda.

The Dubai skyline dominated by the £1billion Burj, standing 2,717ft



