A Flower in the Desert

The current record-holder for the world’s tallest building is the Burj Kalifa in Dubai. It is over 2700 feet tall (that’s nearly twice the Empire State building). It was designed with a “Y”-shaped floor plan. This shape allows the most amount of natural light into the interior of the building. It also provides the maximum view of the Persian Gulf, a design feature which was important to the builders. Not only is this design beautiful and unique, it has proven to be extremely stable. With a foundation consisting of over 60,000 cubic yards of specially-formulated concrete and 192 steel pilings (each 45 meters long and driven 50 meters deep), the builders were continually surprised at how strong it proved to be. The building’s finished height was raised several times during the construction phase. Even at its dizzying present height, designers said the structure could easily have risen several hundred meters higher. So where did the clever idea for the building base come from? Design architect Adrian Smith said that his three-lobed concept was inspired by the patterns of the Hymenocallis flower. The field of biomimicry has exploded in recent years. Sophisticated technology keeps borrowing ideas, materials, and structures from the Master Designer. How arrogant to think we could ever do any better than God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_dubai