Fun Facts About The Burj Khalifa

It also has the highest observation deck anywhere.
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The design is an abstraction of the Hymenocallis, a flower that has long petals that extend from its center. The flower is found in tropical and subtropical spots around the world, and its name means “beautiful membrane” in Greek. The Burj mimics the flower with its Y-shaped structure composed of elements—in this case building wings—arranged around a central point.
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There was so much rebar used to construct this building—31,400 metric tons, in fact—that if it were all laid end to end it would cover more than a quarter of the way around the world.
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The building’s exterior is made up of 26,000 individually cut glass panels. More than 300 cladding experts from China collaborated on the Burj Khalifa’s cladding system, which was designed specially to withstand the heat of a Dubai summer.
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36 cleaners board 12 13-ton machines that move along tracks attached to the outside of the building, at heights of 20,000 feet. There actually was a competition for the cleaning gig, and Australian company Cox Gomyl won.
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It comes as no surprise that the world’s tallest building consumes a whole lot of resources. The Burj Khalifa is supplied with an average of 250,000 gallons of water every day, and can reach an electrical demand equal to that of 360,000 100-watt bulbs burning at once.
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The Burj Khalifa’s designers anticipated the difficulty of running down 120 flights of stairs in an emergency, so they developed the first-ever elevator system for a mega–high rise that can carry out controlled evacuations for some fire or security issues.
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