Taipei 101 will not keep its crown for long as there are many other projects in the planning stages or even near completion. The most talked about is the Burj Dubai projected to be completed and occupied in 2009.
In February 2007, it surpassed the Sears Tower as the building with the most floors in the world and earlier this month the tower's height was 460.1 meters (1,510 feet), with 129 floors.
It is currently the second tallest building in the world excluding antennas and is rising by 2-3 floors per week. It looks like the Burj Dubai will be the tallest building in the world by the end of this year.
The final height is officially being kept a secret - you wouldn't want to spend years constructing the tallest building for another to 'pop up' a couple of metres taller a few months later. However, figures released by a contractor on the project have suggested a height of around 808 metres and 162 floors. Even so, other contractors are estimating over 940 metres (over 3,000 feet). To put it into perspective that is 5 times higher than the Swiss Re building in London.
The design of Burj Dubai is derived from the patterning systems embodied in Islamic architecture with the triple-lobed footprint of the building based on an abstracted desert flower native to the region.
The interior will be decorated by Giorgio Armani as an Armani Hotel (the first of its kind) will occupy the lower 37 floors. Further hotels are planned for Milan and London.
It will also feature the world's fastest elevator, rising and descending at 18 m/s (65 km/h, 40 mph).The world's current fastest elevator is Taipei 101 travelling at 16.83 m/s (60.6 km/h, 37.5 mph). Even the offical website of the Burj Dubai takes longer to load than the proposed speed of their elevators!
Here are the initial stages of construction....