At more than a million square metres, this was – for a time – the largest building in the world by floor space², though I suspect that even in this vast terminal it is probably impossible – like airports everywhere – to get a reasonably-priced meal or a decent cup of coffee!

Built at a cost of $4.5billion, the terminal also houses the world’s largest baggage-handling system. It opened in 2009 and expanded the airport’s annual capacity to over 60 million passengers. Used exclusively by Emirates, five gates in the terminal have been built with three ramps to accommodate the new double-deck Airbus A380.

The passenger areas include lots of trees and water features, well over 100 check-in desks, luxury lounges, two hotels and a spa. The images in this blog post give you a good idea of what it is like.

Travelling south we come to the Meydan Racecourse where racing fans are protected from the desert sun by the world’s largest cantilevered roof. This iconic 426m-long structure was built in a graceful crescent shape inspired by traditional Islamic symbols.

Turf and dirt tracks allow racing in different weather conditions. You can take in the races from luxury suites, terraced seating for up to 60,000 people, or from the world’s first trackside five-star hotel, where you can even watch from the rooftop swimming pool³. And in case you have trouble making out the winner, you can catch the replay on the world’s longest LED screen – 110m long!

The one thing you technically can’t do here is gamble. While betting is not permitted in the UAE, it is possible to bet on races through foreign gambling agencies.

The facilities surrounding the racecourse were designed to resemble a falcon, renowned for its speed. While not complete in Google’s images, the ‘wings’ covering the parking lots can clearly be made out.

The small lake at the north-east end of the building is intended to become a marina. This will be connected by a canal to the nearby bay, allowing the richest of the rich to travel to the races by boat rather than dealing with traffic jams. You can read more about the racecourse at its official website, and at this blog post about the architect.

However, despite past excesses, there are signs that the financial crisis is having an impact in Dubai. Even with a projected future capacity of 90 million passengers, the International Airport shown above would not be enough to serve the city, so development was started on the Al Maktoum airport 40km to the south of the city.

Although the satellite images show a single runway under construction, the goal is that Al Maktoum will become the world’s largest and busiest airport for both passengers (160 million / year) and cargo. This would involve five runways, three passenger and 16 cargo terminals, as well as hotels, shopping malls and parking for 100,000 cars. Not to mention a bill in excess of $10billion!

Cargo flights started using the airport in 2010 and passenger flights are expected to commence within the next year. However, the planned rapid expansion of the airport has been delayed by the financial downturn, with the goal now to reach full size during the 2020s. The airport is part of a larger project called Dubai World Central which would see the surrounding desert transformed into a number of zones specialising in aerospace, logistics and other commercial enterprises, as well as residential areas. However, this whole project currently appears to be on hold.

Back in the city, an ambitious project called Dubailand is also on hold in a partially-developed state, with confusion about what will happen in the future.

Dubailand was planned to be the largest collection of entertainment and leisure parks in the world, with areas dedicated to retail, sports, amusement parks, eco-tourism and much more. However, most development was halted in 2008, including plans for parks themed by Lego, Marvel, Warner Bros and Dreamworks. Even in places where work did begin, it was quickly abandoned – such as the Universal Studios park and the Falconcity World of Wonders, which was due to have full-size replicas of places like the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Giza.

A few sectors of Dubailand were completed before the money ran out and now sit randomly scattered around the suburban housing and empty desert. Sports City includes a golf course, cricket stadium and Autodrome, but not the planned ‘snow dome’ or other facilities.

The Global Village is the only really complete and successful park. It features pavilions themed for more than 20 different countries, with rides, shows and other family activities.

You can read more about Dubailand at Wikipedia, the Global Village site and at the official Dubailand site. The latter is frozen in time, with the What’s New section promoting the start of construction on a Cricket Academy… in January 2007!

Locations: United Arab Emirates / Categories: Aircraft, Buildings, Large Type, Structures, Weirdness

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This single 5-letter word is over a mile long¹ and some media outlets are claiming it’s the world’s largest graffiti.

We first wrote about this brilliant bit of enormous typography all the way back in 2006, but at the time it was only partially completed, simply saying “HA”.

Long-time readers will recall that this is by no means the world’s largest writing – that honour goes to the utterly incredible “LUECKE” – the individual letters of which are each over a half a mile tall.²

Our original post on Luecke has the full story in the comments thread, including an explanation from Mr. Luecke himself.

This land is my land (yes, really). As my nephew Pete already pointed out, I did it for the hell of it. I was going to open a golf course, but decided not to. If you look in the “L”, you can see 4 holes of my private “course”, though I haven’t maintained it in a couple of years now (due to some surgerys preventing my game), so you might not be able to make it out. My son showed me on the Google Earth program, and you could indeed see the bunkers and barely make out the fairways.

If Sheikh Hamad continues to write out the rest of his (somewhat wordy) official title, then he could potentially make one of the longest pieces of writing on the planet (longer even than the world’s longest poem), but he’d have to think a whole lot bigger if he were going to best the insane type-size of the 2,592,000 point Luecke sign!

Locations: United Arab Emirates / Categories: Islands, Large Type

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It is particularly gleaming, and spectacularly white, because the $2billion no-expense-spared project entailed shipping in the purest white stone known to man, all the way from Macedonia.

Twenty seven other varieties of marble were used in the building, along with many semi-precious stones, such as can be seen in the floral patterns of the courtyard thanks to Google’s excellent high-resolution images.

In addition to the 9,000 capacity of the mosque, the courtyard can hold up to 32,000 worshippers. The mosque is also the burial location of the Sheikh for whom it is named – the founder and first leader of the United Arab Emirates.

While some sources say he is buried in the courtyard, others say his tomb is this smaller building in a garden with reflecting pools to the north of the mosque.

The mosque is flanked by four 115m minarets and eighty domes of various sizes.

The lavish expenditure extends to many aspects of the building. While not the largest mosque in the world¹ it does have a couple of record-breaking features, both of which cost over $8million.

1) The world’s largest carpet – weighing more than 42,000 kg and created with over 2 billion knots.

2) The world’s largest chandelier – finished in gold, holding 40 million pieces of crystal, and measuring 10 by 15 m.

Naturally, such a building needs huge parking lots, with one on either side of the building. There’s also a helicopter landing pad for those for whom road travel is just too inconvenient.

The interior is spectacular, with 1,000 columns, gold glass, and a wall featuring the 99 names (qualities) of Allah (which has obligatory fibre-optic lighting). Somewhat ironically, these features are intended to be ‘subtle’ so as not to distract worshippers.

More information can be found at Wikipedia, and this site has some good information about the construction.

Locations: United Arab Emirates / Categories: Buildings

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Also revealed yesterday was a new name for the building, Burj Khalifa. Dubai’s recent struggle with debt has been widely discussed, but last month Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahayan injected over £6bn into the flailing economy, and in return, the tallest-structure that man has ever built was named after him.

This building has been a favourite topic of conversation here on Google Sightseeing ever since we first launched, as they began building it a year before we hit the intertubes, but we can now finally discuss some of the other jaw-dropping facts and figures surrounding this incredible feat of engineering:

• Visible from 95 km away
• 900 private residences
• 37 floors of office space
• The most stories storeys of any building on Earth
• Highest occupied floor of any building
• Highest observation deck in the world (124th floor)
• The longest lifts in the world

Being the tallest structure ever built also means that the Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest building, a competition which used to be broken down into four subtly-different categories. However the Burj Khalifa does away with all the categorisation by roundly beating everything else in every category.

So what did all of this cost? No one knows for sure, but reports start around £925 million ($1.5 billion). Even the upkeep is going to be astronomical: consider that the tower’s glass and steel exterior would cover 17 football fields if laid out flat, and will reportedly take at least six weeks to clean.

See our previous coverage of the Burj Dubai, the World’s Tallest Structures, The World’s Tallest Buildings and the World’s Tallest Towers.

Locations: United Arab Emirates / Categories: Buildings, Deserts, Shadows, Structures, Towers

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The resort offers the full winter experience, from building snowmen to taking ski lessons. There is even the ‘cozy mountain lodge’ where you can sit by the fireplace and enjoy some apres ski … though of course your glass of mulled wine would have to be non-alcoholic.

This however is not the largest indoor ski slope in the world  – that honour goes to SnowWorld in Landgraaf, the Netherlands, while AlpinCenter in Bottrop, Germany claims the longest indoor run.

Still, Ski Dubai doubtless has the largest energy bill as a result of maintaining a temperature around -1°C in the desert!

More information and lots of images at the official sites of: Ski Dubai, SnowWorld and AlpinCenter, and Wikipedia has a full list of indoor ski centres.

Thanks to Roy, Jack Langdon and David Thornton.

Locations: Germany, Netherlands, United Arab Emirates / Categories: Buildings, Stadiums and Sport

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Currently standing at a staggering 688 m, construction of Burj Dubai is set to continue for another year, and the final height will not be announced until the building opens in September 2009.

As you can see, the Google Earth image was taken while the building was still just a toddler, but you can get an idea of how it might look with a 3D model.

Before the Burj Dubai came along the process for deciding on the world’s tallest building was strangely complex – there’s actually 4 possible categories to consider – and there were separate records for supported masts.

Burj Dubai simplified the debate by taking the top spot in all possible categories, but it gives us an opportunity to revisit all the previous record holders, many of which have been updated since we previously looked at tall buildings and the world’s tallest towers.

Taipei 101 in Taiwan once held the “tallest building” record in 3 of the 4 possible categories with its architectural height of 508 m, highest occupied floor of 438 m and roof height of 448 m.

For the moment at least, Taipei 101 retains the title of largest completed building, but after the completion of Burj Dubai it will have to settle for being the location of the world’s fastest ascending elevator, which can get you up to the 101st floor at a gut-wrenching 37.7 mph!

Chicago’s Sears Tower was once the holder of all tall building records. Taipei 101 failed to conquer its record of “height with antenna”, at 529 m, but Burj Dubai has easily cleared that without the need of extra-reaching aerials.

Lastly, the rope-supported KVLY-TV mast in Blanchard, North Dakota, was officially the tallest man-made structure on the planet at a height of 629 m. The fact that Burj Dubai already tops this height without any external supports is testament to just how amazing an engineering feat it really is.

Further reading at the Wikipedia pages for Burj Dubai, Taipei 101, Sears tower and KVLY-TV mast.

Locations: Illinois, North Dakota, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates / Categories: Buildings, Towers

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Here we can see it in a relatively early stage. From the timeline of pictures on Wikipedia, this image looks to have been taken in early 2006.

But things have changed substantially since then. Already, as of last week, it towers 639m into the sky, with 160 floors. Within the next few weeks, it will likely surpass the – now destroyed – Warsaw radio mast to become the tallest manmade structure ever built. And it won’t even be finished then! It is expected to top off at around 818 metres.

The challenges of building the Burj Dubai are immense, with the incredible heat of the desert, meaning that most of the work is carried out at night, coupled with the problem of pumping concrete that high, all challenges that are overcome thanks to the extraordinary amount of money that is being poured into Dubai by wealthy Princes. It is even said that over 25% of the world’s tower cranes are working on projects in Dubai.

However, the record may not stay with this tower for long, as plans are already being made for a mile-high tower nearby!

Read up on the Burj Dubai and watch its progress in pictures at Wikipedia, see a recent picture of Burj Dubai (and neighboring developments) on Flickr and see a previous post on the current tallest buildings.

Thanks to David Kelly

Locations: United Arab Emirates / Categories: Buildings

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The first developed island is owned by Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher. The $7 million piece of land was gifted to him by Dubai’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and is located in the Arctic (although I’m sure he would have preferred Germany).

There’s various rumours of who owns the other islands, including reports that Rod Stewart spent $33 million to buy mini-Britain.

The entire project is scheduled for completion in 2008, and over in what looks like it might be Spain, we see a boat “spraying” sand to create the island.

Official Website and thanks to Brad, Catherine, alexandrecavaco, Others.

Locations: United Arab Emirates / Categories: Islands

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Perhaps it’s just the beginning of a longer word? HARRY? HASTA LA VISTA? HALP (sic)?

Thanks: Heather Muise

Locations: United Arab Emirates /

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The images haven’t made their way into Maps yet, so if you click the image below you’ll just get an out-of-focus empty shore, but click the Google Earth link and you’ll fly to one of the super-cool artificial Palm Islands in Dubai.

There’s loads of things to see all over the place so hopefully we’ll see the images in Google Maps soon!

Locations: United Arab Emirates / Categories: Islands, Structures

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