The claim is in! The developers of the 160-story Burj Dubai in Dubai have declared it the world’s tallest building, even though it’s still under construction. On July 21 it reached 141 stories and 1,680 feet, exceeding the 1,671-foot height of Taipei 101, Taiwan’s towering highrise. And Burj Duai is still growing! Slated for completion in 2008, its final height is a closely held secret. But according to rumors, it will be around the 2,300-foot mark—making it 600-plus feet higher than any building ever built.

Taipei 101 had previously taken the title from the Petronas Towers in Kula Lumpur, Malaysia, when it topped out at nearly 200 feet above the two towers in 2004. The 1,476-foot-tall Petronas Towers, completed in 1997, were only 20-some feet taller than the then-reigning champion, the Sears Tower in Chicago (the last U.S. highrise to hold the tallest-building record). However, today’s latest skyscraper titleholders are being constructed hundreds of feet higher then their predecessors—not just a few feet higher.

Where will it stop, or will it? One day soon, will we see a mile-high building as envisioned in the late 1950s by America’s architectural superstar Frank Lloyd Wright? Do these recent construction accomplishments beyond America’s shores—with major input from U.S. structural engineers—make you wonder, "Will the title for having the tallest anything ever return to the United States? Or will the Sears Tower be the last U.S. building to hold that distinction?"

Both super-tall U.S. buildings currently planned or underway—the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site in New York City and the 2,000-foot-tall Chicago Spire building—will fall significantly short of the Burj Dubai record.
It all started back in 1885 when Chicago structural engineer William Jenney (inspired by his wife’s wire birdcage) designed what was called the world’s "first skyscraper," the Home Insurance Building. Although taller buildings existed around that time, they were masonry-bearing wall structures, which meant thick walls took up much of the useable space on the lower floors. Jenney’s steel/iron frame concept opened a whole new realm of possibilities for structural design and future multistory construction. With it began the race to build increasingly taller buildings, with one owner besting the next.

In the past, American owners and developers enthusiastically embraced this pursuit. It served as the catalyst for U.S. structural engineers becoming the best-of-the-best in the world as experts in designing skyscrapers. And as trailblazers, American engineers helped keep the tallest-building title in the United States for more than 100 years—until 1996 when the space-age-looking Petronas Towers captured the honor.

The most important U.S. record-holding buildings up until then (and the structural engineers who made them a reality) include the following:

Home Insurance Building (180 feet), Chicago, 1885, William Jenney, engineer;
Park Row Building (391 feet), New York City, 1899, Nathaniel Roberts, engineer;
Singer Building (612 feet), New York City, 1908, Otto Semsch, engineer;
Metropolitan Life (700 feet), New York City, 1909, Purdy-Henderson, engineers;
Woolworth Building (792 feet), New York City, 1913, Gunvald Aus, engineer;
Chrysler Building*, (1,046 feet), New York City, 1930, Ralph Squire, engineer;
Empire State Building (1,250 feet), New York City, 1931, Homer Balcom, engineer;
World Trade Center Towers (1,368 feet), New York City, 1972, Les Robertson, engineer; and
Sears Tower (1,454 feet), Chicago, 1974, Fazlur Khan, engineer.

The current succession of tall, international towers has been made possible by the expertise of daring U.S. engineers at the forefront of innovative, cost-effective, and industry-altering structural designs. Owners/developers around the world will continue to tap into this country’s highrise talent, given that emerging countries view modern skyscrapers as symbols of commerce and, ultimately, international respectability. For that reason, creative U.S. structural engineers will continue to participate in the competition to build higher and higher. No doubt they will push the engineering design envelope even more, remaining trailblazers in building giant, trendsetting structures globally.

It’s obvious that U.S. structural engineering thought and creativity have no boundaries, and that today’s generation of U.S.-based structural engineers will continue to greatly impact structural engineering practices around the globe because of their seemingly instinctive desire to make record-setting structural designs possible wherever the project is.

Should America’s owners or developers ever want the tallest building to be located in the United States, there certainly is the structural talent here to make it a reality—and to best record-breaking marvels such as Burj Dubai.

*Note: The Chrysler was the first building to top the 1,000-foot mark. It also took the title of world’s tallest structure away from the 986-foot-tall, iron-framed Eiffel Tower, designed by the great French structural engineer Gustave Eiffel.

Richard Weingardt, P.E., is CEO and chairman of Richard Weingardt Consultants, Inc., a Denver-based structural engineering firm. He can be reached via e-mail at rweingardt@gostructural.com.