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Standing proud off the coast of Dubai is one of the most incredible buildings on the planet.
Explore the epic engineering and visionary design behind Dubai's iconic Burj Al Arab, the world's tallest and most luxurious hotel.
Key Takeaways
- The Burj Al Arab was a strategic project to shift Dubai’s economy from oil to luxury tourism.
- Innovative design and engineering were critical to overcoming the challenges of building on a man-made island.
- The building’s iconic sail shape connects deeply with Dubai’s cultural and maritime heritage.
- Risk-taking and visionary leadership by Sheikh Mohammed were essential to the project's success.
- Collaboration between young architects and experienced engineers enabled groundbreaking construction techniques.
Summary
- The Burj Al Arab stands 321 meters tall, taller than the Eiffel Tower, and is the tallest hotel on earth.
- Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum envisioned the hotel as a symbol to diversify Dubai's economy beyond oil.
- Dubai's transformation from a pearl diving backwater to a luxury tourism hub is central to the hotel's purpose.
- A young British architectural team led by Tom Wright was chosen to design the radical sail-shaped building.
- The design was inspired by a modern sailing yacht, symbolizing Dubai's seafaring heritage.
- The hotel is built on a man-made island 270 meters off Dubai’s coast, a first for such a skyscraper.
- Engineering challenges included creating a secure, low-lying island using pioneering concrete blocks to withstand Gulf storms.
- The project pushed the boundaries of engineering and design, requiring innovative solutions and rigorous testing.
- The Burj Al Arab was intended to be a unique, instantly recognizable global icon for Dubai.
- The construction involved complex coordination between architects and engineers, balancing aesthetics and safety.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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At 321 meters, it soars higher than the Eiffel Tower.
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It's the tallest hotel on earth and possibly the most luxurious.
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A structure designed to amaze.
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Its name means the Arabian Tower.
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This is the Burj Al Arab.
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Creating this 21st century icon will be an epic struggle that pushes everyone involved to the limit.
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In November 1994, construction begins on what is planned as the world's tallest and most luxurious hotel.
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The pressure is on from day one.
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With the eyes of the world watching, no one on the project will want to disappoint this particular client.
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Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's Crown Prince, is the visionary behind this amazing building. The project is his response to the economic time bomb his country confronts.
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As his close advisor, Sultan bin Sulayem, knows all too well.
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He knew that we don't have oil. He knows that oil is going to end someday, and there are two choices: either go and do something about it and find other alternatives way to sustain the life for the people of Dubai, or sit waiting for help.
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Only 50 years ago, Dubai's a dusty backwater.
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Home to pearl divers, coastal traders and Bedouin.
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Then, in the 1960s, prospectors discover oil.
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The sudden injection of millions of petro dollars transforms the sheikdom.
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But geologists predict the oil boom will be over by 2016. The good life could end just as quickly as it began, when the wells run dry.
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The answer to Dubai's economic survival lies in its geography.
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This tiny emirate, less than twice the size of London, is in the remote Arabian Gulf.
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But Dubai has three untapped assets.
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Sun, sand, and sea.
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Facing future economic meltdown, Sheikh Mohammed makes a crucial decision.
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He will turn his country into one of the world's most exclusive holiday destinations.
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A playground for the rich on the Arabian Gulf coast.
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The Sheikh needs a luxurious centerpiece to launch his country into high-end tourism.
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He stakes what some speculate is over a billion dollars on the tallest, most lavish hotel in the world, with a unique seven-star reputation. The Burj Al Arab.
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I think it was very important to put Dubai on the map of the world. There's no hotel like this hotel. It takes guts, and Sheikh Mohammed has a lot of guts.
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The Sheikh's courage is clear from his choice of architects.
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A radical young team from Britain, brave enough to take up the challenge, but very short on experience. They are led by chief architect Tom Wright.
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We had an average age of 32.
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Not a gray hair between us.
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And none of us had gone over about 15 stories.
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I was quite staggered by the scale and the immensity of the project.
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Tom Wright and his colleagues have a reputation for innovative engineering.
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But they're more used to designing schools and offices.
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But Dubai is a place where connections can make all the difference.
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Through a contact in the ruler's office, the team gets its break.
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Sheikh Mohammed agrees to a meeting and is so impressed with their initial concepts, he awards them the contract.
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Now Wright must turn his sketches into a design so remarkable, the building becomes a world-renowned landmark.
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We had many sleepless nights worrying that the building we designed wouldn't turn out to be at all iconic.
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Wright knows he must push his design to the limits.
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A building only becomes an icon when its form is simple, but unique.
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We decided that if you could draw a building simply with a few strokes of a pen,
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and it was instantly recognizable as not only the building, but the place, Egypt in this case, um, you'd created something that was iconic.
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So, if you consider these buildings in the world, there are probably no more than 10 maximum that have actually achieved this status.
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Australia.
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Sydney Opera House.
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As with all these buildings, it's usually just the first couple of lines that actually make you know exactly where the building is.
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Paris.
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Can Tom Wright and his team compete with the likes of Gustav Eiffel?
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This is a once in a lifetime challenge.
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All the brainstorming pays off when Wright finally has his Eureka moment.
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We were sitting there having a beer watching the modern sailing yacht come out of the Dubai offshore sailing club.
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You think of excitement, you think of exhilaration.
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And we went, hey, this must be the one.
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The form we came up with is very simple.
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And within a few lines, uh, I think you can see that it has all the elements of, uh, an iconic building.
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It's simple and instantly recognizable.
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The concept immediately catches the Sheikh's imagination.
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A sail billowing in the wind has deep meaning for the people of Dubai with their seafaring heritage.
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To complete the nautical image, Wright wants the structure to rise out of the water like a massive yacht.
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But this will require an island as a base, and there are none.
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Wright's undeterred.
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He proposes they build an island specifically for the hotel.
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A first for Dubai.
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Constructing the hotel out at sea will significantly add to the risk and cost.
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Can Wright persuade his colleagues this radical scheme will work?
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I remember, um, I was pulling the, the, the, the sail out to sea,
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and, uh, the rest of the design team were pulling the, uh, the sail back onto the shore.
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And this continued to go backwards and forwards before, uh, finally the, uh, the client stepped in and, uh, said, no, it, it's going to be out at sea.
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Sheikh Mohammed is prepared to take the risk.
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The hotel will be built 270 meters off the coast.
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No one has ever built a skyscraper this high on an artificial island.
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This 321-meter structure, weighing a quarter of a million tons, will need to stand firm against earthquakes and Gulf storms.
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Wright has won the first of many battles.
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The Burj will rise out of the sea.
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But time and again his refusal to compromise will force his colleagues to push the boundaries of engineering to the limit.
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By early 1995, the construction team is hard at work on phase one,
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building a low-lying island.
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The man-made island for the world's tallest hotel has hit a critical stage just five months into the build.
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Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed is depending on this project, the Burj Al Arab, to convert his country from oil producer to top-class tourist destination.
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But a debate rages over the island's height.
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Architect Tom Wright wants to make it low to give the impression of a sail rising out of the water.
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We argued a lot about the height of the island.
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From a design point of view, I wanted people to be close to the sea.
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From the start, he's gone head-to-head with engineer Mike McNicholas,
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who's responsible for the island's safety.
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I wanted the island as low as you possibly could, you know, skimming the sea.
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I'm coming from the other end, needed to make sure we're protecting the island.
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McNicholas's worst fear is that waves breaking over the island could damage the hotel or even drag guests into the sea.
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Initially, the engineers plan to build the island using rocks.
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They are available locally and the technology is proven.
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But Wright rejects this.
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A rock island would have to be far too large to repel the sea safely.
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To keep the island low, McNicholas experiments with pioneering concrete blocks designed to reduce the impact of waves.
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But no one in the Gulf has ever used these blocks before.
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I had to insist with the team that we carried out tank testing. It was the only way we were going to be sure that the island would be safe.
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These tests replicate the power of the tallest waves that can occur once in a hundred years and sends them crashing into a series of differently configured models.
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The force is largely dissipated.
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With the engineers' help, architect Tom Wright has won his battle for a secure island that rises only seven and a half meters above the waves.
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Now the team begins the second stage of construction.
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In the center of the island, construction workers drive huge lengths of steel 20 meters into the ground.
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This creates a triangular steel wall known as a cofferdam,
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which will become the outside of the hotel basement once they excavate the sand from inside.
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But removing the sand could be dangerous.
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That was a real challenge for us. It's deepest day and night, seven days a week.
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How are we going to stop the seawater coming into the structure?
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How are we going to stop the seawater coming around our structure from beneath and flooding it?
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The weight of the sea is a huge force on its bed.
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This pressure forces water through the sand and threatens to flood the artificial island from beneath.
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To keep the sea out, McNicholas injects liquid cement into the sand to seal off his steel wall from below.
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But as the sand is removed to form the basement, there's less and less weight to hold back the force of the sea.
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The cement seal is going to be tested to the limit.
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In the worst case, the pressure caused by that water movement could have blown the whole bottom of the excavation like a champagne cork.
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If McNicholas's calculations are wrong, the excavation could be swamped,
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killing hundreds of workers.
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But he stands by his design.
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With the cement seal in place, the excavators begin to remove the sand.
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As the man responsible, he's not going to let the workers face the risk alone.
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I felt I had to be one of the first guys down at the bottom of the excavation, looking up 10 meters above myself, thinking,
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each side of this cofferdam is 7,500 tons of sea pressure pushing in.
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When put to the test, both wall and seal hold firm.
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And one of the probably proudest moments of my career was being stood on that excavation and look looking around and saying, the steel wall surrounding me and thinking, we are holding back the sea.
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My design worked.
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Now, five years into the project, the team reaches an important milestone.
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The iconic exterior is almost complete.
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But the interior decoration of the world's most luxurious hotel is seriously behind schedule.
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This stage has always been a race against time.
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Now Sheikh Mohammed is about to send the design team into a tailspin.
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Dubai, April 1999.
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The world's tallest and most opulent hotel is approaching completion.
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The doors open to the first ultra-rich guests in December 1999.
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A full month before the millennium.
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And Sheikh Mohammed comes to watch the final sunset of the century from his magnificent new hotel.
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Architect Tom Wright and the team have fulfilled the brief.
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Every part of this iconic structure is extraordinary.
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This amazing feat of engineering, the cantilever restaurant, delivers Tom Wright's vision of dining in the sky.
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A spectacular combination of fire and water greets you before you even enter the building.
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The world's tallest hotel on earth lays the foundations for a secure future when the oil runs out.
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And it's now the international symbol for Dubai.
Topics:Burj Al ArabDubailuxury hotelengineering documentaryTom Wrightman-made islandarchitectural designDubai tourismsheikh Mohammed bin Rashidmegaproject
