Standing at more than a half-mile tall, the world's tallest skyscraper opened on Jan. 4 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At more than a half-mile tall, the temperature atop the tower is 15 degrees cooler than at street-level.

The centerpiece of a large-scale, mixed-use development, the tower was constructed by South Korea-based Samsung Engineering and Construction from a design by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, architects for Chicago's Willis (formerly Sears) Tower and New York City's One World Trade Center (formerly Freedom Tower).

Said to cost approximately $1.5 billion, the 2,717-foot-tall Burj Dubai tower is awash in red ink and has everyone from suppliers to bankers more than a little nervous. Or maybe the nervousness is from riding in the elevator, which breaks residential street speed limits at 40 mph.

It not only holds the record for the tallest concrete building in the world but also for vertical concrete pumping for any construction - 1,988 feet to the 156th floor, with the remaining structure above built of lighter structural steel. The tower also houses the world's fastest elevator, which travels 40 mph.

The primary structural system is reinforced concrete, with nearly 59,000 yards used to construct the foundation, which features 192 5-foot by 41-foot-long piles buried more than 164 feet deep. Designers configured the tower in a Y shape to reduce the wind forces on the structure. Each wing, with its own high-performance core and perimeter columns, buttresses the others with a six-sided central core. The result is a tower that is extremely stiff torsionally.

Building the actual tower required another 431,000 yards, 55,000 metric tons of rebar, and 22 million manhours. A high-density, low-permeability concrete was specified for the foundation, with a cathodic protection system under the mat used to minimize any detrimental effects from the corrosive chemicals in the local ground water.

For the main structure, each batch was tested to ensure it could withstand the extreme pressures of the building's weight. In addition, the consistency of the product had to hold up against the Persian Gulf temperatures, which can reach 122°F.

To combat this issue during pours happening in the summer months, ice was added to the mix and the product was only poured at night to take advantage of the cooler air and high humidity.