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Burj Khalifa Dubai passes CN Tower as World's Tallest

CN Tower no longer world's tallest

Sep 13, 2007 11:10 AM

Bill Taylor
Features Writer

The CN Tower may look just the same today, but it's no longer a world-beater.
The United Arab Emirates' upstart Burj Dubai, still under construction, has reached 555 metres, two metres taller than Canada's pride and joy. When it's finished late next year, Burj Dubai will top 800 metres, with 165 storeys of apartments, shops, hotel rooms and office space.

"The accomplishment of being the world’s tallest free-standing structure is another defining moment for the multinational team of over 5,000 people who are using their collective intelligence to make this iconic structure a symbol of human achievement," said Mohamed Ali Alabbar, head of Emaar Properties, which owns the new tower. "This architectural and construction master-piece is truly an inspirational human achievement that celebrates the can-do mindset of Dubai."

CN Tower officials are playing it cool and, so far, the website still calls it "the world's tallest building." A short statement, sent out by email, said, "When the time comes and the building is complete, we will congratulate the Burj Dubai project on their unique achievement."

Burj Dubai had already beaten Taipei 101, which at 508 metres has been holding the tallest-building title since it opened in 2004.

The Dubai project was launched in 2004 as part of a $20-billion, 200-hectare downtown development billed as the most prestigious square kilometre on earth.

Designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill of Chicago, the tower is being built by Samsung Corp. of South Korea.

But there is one thing about the CN Tower which may yet rise above Burj Dubai and leave us with something to brag about:

The Burj Dubai website boasts that its 124th-floor observatory, 442 metres up, will be "the highest publicly accessible observation deck in the world."

Not quite. The CN Tower's Sky Pod is 447 metres above ground.


with files from Canadian Press
 
it's kinda odd that today our dollar is the highest its been since 1976, the year the CN tower opened up. so our dollar is the highest it's been since 1976 but the CN tower isn't. :(

yes, i know there's a logical error the way it's written but you know what i mean .


we might get lucky though, they may pump too much oil out of the ground and the tower may sink into the sand ;)
 
scarberiankhatru said:
What's the highest free observation deck (or non-sneakily accessible window) in the world?
Click to expand...

I can't remember where I got these from so I hope whoever designed these don't mind me taking the liberty of sharing these on this forum. In the end this is really stretching our need to have the highest something-or-other in Toronto.....


SkyPodezzz2.jpg



BurjDeckHeight3.jpg
 
I'm quite amazed at actually how much taller and massive the Burj Dubai will be- this thing is no bucket on a stick either, this is a legit building.
 
Bogtrotter said:
I'm quite amazed at actually how much taller and massive the Burj Dubai will be- this thing is no bucket on a stick either, this is a legit building.
Click to expand...

The height is impressive, but I'm not that amazed...at this point I almost expect a building of that size to pop up somewhere.
 
it looks like the cladding will be a nice sky blue.

pretty smart if you ask me. the terrorists won't be able to see it :p
 
UrbanToronto and Eye Weekly`s own Shawn Micallef wrote the following...

The CN Tower and us
Let Dubai have the record – our tower is still the tallest freestanding tribute to both our pride and our insecurity

city_lead.jpg


Every time I walk down Ossington Avenue a block north of Bloor, I register the CN Tower in my peripheral vision – but when I turn to look at it I'm surprised each time because I'm not seeing the tower but rather the dome of the Ukranian Catholic Church of the Holy Protection on Leeds Street. Houses along this part of Ossington block the actual tower, but it's such a landmark on all of our mental maps of Toronto that my brain replaces what is actually there with the CN Tower. Wherever we are in Toronto we can either see or sort of feel its position and proximity to us. It is the compass that lets us know where we are.

The CN Tower has so penetrated our civic consciousness that it hardly matters that after nearly 32 years it's about to lose its status as the world's tallest freestanding structure to the Burj Dubai (Dubai Tower) in the United Arab Emirates. When our tower was built, its world-beating status was a matter of civic and national pride, transcending regionalism the way Expo '67 or Wayne Gretzky and the rest of the 1980s Edmonton Oilers did. The CN Tower gave all Canadians bragging rights.

Planning for the tower began in 1971 as TV and FM radio signals that originated downtown were being blocked by Toronto's growing skyline. Along the way, the Sky Pod and Space Deck were added as builders realized they had a tourist attraction on their hands – “a goldmine in the sky selling rides to the top at $2 to $3 each†– and a few extra feet were added when they realized it could beat Moscow's Ostankino Tower. When it finally opened in 1976, the Toronto Star reported that those in cottage country discovered new programs on radio and TV, prompting the mayor of Bracebridge to ask, “You can't get us some American channels, can you?â€

Yet strangely, even though it stayed on top of the world for all these years, that record alone was never enough. The CN Tower always tried to outdo itself, as if our confidence as a world city (municipally) or as a middle power (nationally) is so deeply insecure it required constant maintenance.

In the late 1970s Jimmy Conklin – “the Carney King†– set up Undercurrent: $750,000 worth of arcade amusements in the basement, creating an “unsleazy†arcade that “appealed to the whole family,†hosted by costumed attendants Glitch and Short Circuit. In the 1980s, Citytv's Moses Znaimer produced the Tour of the Universe space simulation ride that he hoped to turn into a North American franchise. In recent years, a glass floor was added to the pod, its strength measured by the weight of hippos (14 of them) and, as we have all seen this past summer, a long overdue LED lighting scheme. It's as if the height never really mattered all along, so why should it matter now that we're no longer on top?

Though it's a rare local icon we share with the rest of the country, the CN Tower is unmistakably Torontonian and will continue to mean a great deal to this city. Returning to Toronto, even by plane, there is the special moment it finally comes into a view, when the relieved feeling of being home sets in: we are safe again and that which lays beyond our city's walls has not managed to destroy us.

We've all got our favourite view of our tower. It's said that tower architect John Andrews' favourite place to view it is from the northeast corner of Bay and King, where it's framed perfectly by the austere black towers of the TD Centre. From there, the Space Pod seems as oversized as the moon does in the E.T. movie posters, but the tower itself seems almost short and stubby. From the west, around Liberty Village or Fort York, it's suddenly standing alone, far from the downtown cluster, its spectacular size looking bigger than you might remember.

Though it looks different depending on the perspective, the tower always dominates the skyline from anywhere in the city. When it opened in 1976, the late alderman, journalist and architect Colin Vaughan (father of current Councillor Adam Vaughan) wrote, “Some people are complaining that you can't go anywhere in Toronto without having the CN Tower come along too. Turn a corner on a street, look out a window and the tower seems to be there, always present whether you like it or not.†These early reactions are not unlike current opinions on the new LED lighting scheme, but after nearly two generations with it hanging around every day, losing it would feel like having a limb removed.

Imagine a Toronto without the CN Tower. Darren O'Donnell did in his 2004 novel Your Secrets Sleep With Me, where he wrote of a tornado toppling it into Lake Ontario, forever placing that book into the local dystopia file. We would be as lost and just as freaked out without our concrete compass as New Yorkers were when the World Trade Centre catastrophically disappeared from their lives, leaving that city's citizens guessing where the tip of Manhattan was and, consequently, where they were, both physically and existentially.

Amy Lavender Harris, a York University professor whose Imagining Toronto project is the most complete collection of Toronto-based literature in the city, outlined literary representations of the tower in the second uTOpia anthology, The State of the Arts: Living with Culture in Toronto, and finds the tower irreplaceable. “Without the CN Tower we would lose our bearings,†she says. “And its coordinates are useful for far more than guiding us when we stumble out of an unfamiliar subway station. It also reminds us of our identity: as a city striving for recognition on the world stage. Its architectural clumsiness mirrors our own.â€

Opinions on the tower have always varied wildly. There are those who love it but find it kind of awkward, like Harris, or those who take cheap shots at it by dragging out the tired old “phallus in the sky†criticism (which says more about what's on their mind than about what the tower does for us). I've always thought it was the sleekest thing around – like the skinny architectural version of an Airstream Trailer – that long, perfect curve to the ground, the Space Pod looking like a glass and steel pill I wish I could ingest. The CN Tower is weird-looking, which is why we haven't been able to stop looking at it all these years, like those supermodels that are so beautiful they're kind of ugly. We can't take our eyes off of any of them.

Being on top didn't cure our insecurity, and though it gave us the chance to boast a little when visitors from abroad were around, it hardly matters that the CN Tower is no longer the highest. Its usefulness to us has gone well beyond a world record, so Dubai can have it. From the looks of it, they're even more insecure than us.
 
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