Burj Al Arab — skyscraper
Image by keerthichn from Pixabay

Burj Al Arab

  • 2 min read
  • 25.141° N 55.185° E

Interesting facts

  • About 39 percent of the tower's total height is space that cannot be occupied, given over to the sculptural form rather than rooms.
  • Building the island took about three years, longer than the less than three years needed to raise the tower on top of it.
  • The shoreline was once known as Chicago Beach, after the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, which welded giant floating oil-storage tanks on the site.
  • There are no ordinary rooms: all 199 units are suites, the smallest about 169 square metres and the largest about 780.
  • The famous seven-star label was never official; it came from a British journalist on a pre-opening tour, while the hotel itself carries five-star ratings.
  • Besides a celebrity tennis match, the helipad has served as a car racing track, a boxing ring and the take-off point for a record kitesurfing jump.
  • Roughly 70,000 cubic metres of concrete and 9,000 tonnes of steel went into the building, with up to 2,000 workers on site at the peak of construction.
  • A layer of large boulders, ringed by a honeycomb pattern of concrete, armours the artificial island against erosion by the sea.
  • The gold-heavy interiors were created by the British-Chinese designer Khuan Chew, working separately from the architects who shaped the sail.
  • The building appears on the cover of Owl City's 2009 album Ocean Eyes.

Why it is worth it

The Burj al-Arab was designed to be a single, instantly readable image, and it succeeds: a white sail billowing from a mast on its own island off the Dubai coast. The architect Tom Wright, working for the British firm Atkins, based the outline on the sail of a dhow, the traditional trading boat of the Gulf, and the building has become as much a logo for the city as a hotel. Construction started in July 1994 and it opened on 1 December 1999, developed by the Jumeirah Group.

The drama is structural as well as graphic. The hotel stands on an artificial island about 280 metres offshore from Jumeirah Beach, joined to land by a private bridge. Because the island is made of reclaimed sand, the tower is held up by 230 concrete piles, each 40 metres long. The "sail" itself is a translucent membrane of fibreglass fabric stretched between the two arms of the frame; by day it shields the interior from the desert sun, and after dark it becomes a screen for coloured light. The whole structure rises 321 metres from its island, on 56 floors.

Inside, the sail wraps an atrium some 180 metres high, one of the tallest anywhere, layered with gold-toned balconies. High on the mast, a restaurant cantilevers 27 metres out over the sea, and a circular helipad projects from the other side at about 210 metres — the platform where Roger Federer and Andre Agassi once played a publicity tennis match. Down below, another dining room sits around an aquarium of nearly a million litres.

Whatever one thinks of its opulence, the Burj al-Arab is best appreciated as a piece of sculpture set against sea and sky. The view from the public beaches to either side, especially at sunset when the fabric glows, shows why it launched a whole era of spectacular building on this coast.

Getting there

The hotel stands off the coast of Umm Suqaym in Dubai's Jumeirah district, about 3 km from the centre of that neighbourhood. Dubai International Airport (DXB) is roughly 22 km away; taxis run along the coast road. The best free views are from Jumeirah Beach and the shoreline nearby.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the United Arab Emirates 7The Most Striking Skyscrapers 20The Most Beautiful Buildings 286

From the encyclopaedia

The Jumeirah Burj Al Arab, commonly known as Burj Al Arab, is a luxury hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Developed and managed by Jumeirah, it is one of the tallest hotels in the world, although 39% of its total height is made up of non-occupiable space. Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island that is 280 m (920 ft) from Jumeirah Beach and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. The shape of the structure is designed to resemble the sail of a dhow. It has a helipad near the roof, at a height of 210 m (689 ft) above ground. The Burj Al Arab is now temporarily closed for 18 months or 1.5 years for renovation. The renovation is set to make the interior of the building more modern while keeping its original look.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

25.14139, 55.18528per Wikidata