"We're not sure we have the record or not, so we'll just nudge it up a thousand feet ... here. Done!"

The full photo gallery. Neat looking building, I like that big skyscrapers have tops and bottoms again; I hated the sixties and seventies ones that just sort of ended at the top.

I read, or heard, somewhere, that Dubai has like 20% of all construction cranes, worldwide, in operation.

And it turns out it's all on a credit card.

Sublime to the point of being frightening, Burj Khalifa is archaically greedy with energy and resources. It is a modern building in the sense that – like Zaha Hadid's new MAXXI museum in Rome – it was built for vainglory rather than for purpose. Vast in size but small in meaning, Burj is a lot more stuff, but less idea.

I have a vision of it now, several years hence, its glossy surfaces dulled by sandstorms, embarrassing stress-fractures in its shiny, arrogant face. It will be an ancient monument surprisingly soon. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. - Stephen Bayley

Whoever commissioned that building really should have watched this cartoon first.

I'm personally fascinated by the Ryugyong Hotel.

Huh, I didn't realize that they'd restarted contruction on the Ryugyong.

I didn't either. Interesting.

This was my photo of the place back when it was still under construction and called the Burj Dubai. It was so weird, it dwarfed all the skyscrapers near it. I've been enjoying seeing the photos and videos of it. All the unskilled laborers that worked on it are basically slaves, working 16 hour days seven days a week and living in trailer parks with little or no sanitation or amenities. Dubai was a super creepy place to visit, but not in any of the usual creepy ways.