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When we took the glossy black lift up to the 124th floor, it felt as though we weren’t moving at all, even though we were rising at ten metres a second.

Our ears popped a few times while seagull music and images played from a dozen little plasma screens scattered around its walls. Then the doors opened and we walked out onto the observation deck. The view seemed very familiar. That confused me. Here I was, up on the tallest building in the world and I felt like I’d seen this sort of thing before. I was looking down past the tops of skyscrapers at snaking road and rail systems. Then I realised that I had indeed seen cities from this viewpoint many times before. From a plane.

How big?

Incredibly, I wasn’t even at the top. It was only half way. The habitable part of the building stretches up to floor 160 and the spire tops out at 828m. That’s 200 floors high. The next two tallest buildings, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan and the Willis Tower in Chicago, are less than 300 metres shorter.

To put these numbers in context, think about Kelly Holmes. If you laid those three buildings horizontally next to each other, and set her running on top 800m form alongside them, she would reach the end of the Taiwan and Chicago buildings after about 1 minute 10 seconds — after passing Canary Wharf about 25 seconds into her run. She would be running for a full 45 seconds longer before she got to the end of the Burj Khalifa.

Height and debt

To the casual observer, the Burj Khalifa might simply be yet another boastful shout to the world from the oil-rich Middle East, reminding us that they are on the ascendancy as the Western star wanes. A more aware reader will know that Dubai is actually in serious trouble financially, its oil having run out and its debt rocketing. Many extravagant projects have been ‘mothballed’ and even the famous World Islands development has stalled, its owners in debt to the tune of £26b. The 11b cubic feet of sand used to create the islands is now swiftly being reclaimed by the sea.

The Burj itself has not escaped the embarrassment that has beset Dubai in recent months. It shocked the Emirates when it was renamed just before its opening in January as the Burj Khalifa, a name not linked in any way to Dubai, but reflecting the glory of its oil-a-plenty rival, Abu Dhabi, in order to thank them for bailing them out to the tune of £6b.

Modern Babel

When you are inside, the heat of Dubai, together with its boiling political and economic situation. is easily forgotten because of the serenity of the design. The visitor is led to a point on the guided tour which is infused with spirituality. In an observation bunker, named ‘From the earth to the sky’, looking up at the structure, the building takes on an identity of its own. Through a legend on the wall it claims, ‘I am the power that lifts the world’s head proudly skywards, surpassing limits and expectations… I am the life force of collective aspirations and the aesthetic union of many cultures… I am the heart of the city and its people’.

The whole thing makes the bells ring like crazy, it made me want to grab a Bible and revisit the account of the Tower of Babel. On reading Genesis 11 in this context, I was a little chilled by the similarities between the two projects. A tower built on a plain with its top in the heavens. The desire to ‘make a name for ourselves’, many nations speaking in the same language. The Burj makes a great deal of the co-operative might of expertise from around the world that has brought it into being. It seemed a little too much of a revisit to the plain in the land of Shinar. Will this building survive its arrogance?

What endures?

I asked Andrew Smith, the British head of security at the Burj, what he considered the most serious threats faced by the building to be. ‘Fire is one of the main safety concerns’, he replied. ‘Then there are people who want to climb the tower from the outside, those who want to jump off it with parachutes and those who want to jump off it without parachutes.’

How long will it last? How will it end? Will its swimming pools, air conditioning and water parks be able to fight off the 50 degree heat of the shimmering desert for ever?

When Jesus made his ‘I am’ statements, he told us that he was a more permanent fixture and a more stable form of spirituality than a tower could ever be, far more lasting and solid than bricks and mortar, glass and steel. He promised that if we put our trust in him, we would endure, even through destruction. ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ He said: ‘Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live’.

The Burj Khalifa

How big?

Height and debt

Modern Babel

What endures?

Eleanor Margesson

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