The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has confirmed the official building height of Burj Khalifa at 828.00 meters (2716.54 feet), as well as the title of 'The World’s Tallest Building'.

With the official completion of the building on January 4, the Burj Khalifa surpassed the previous 'World’s Tallest' (Taipei 101) by 320 metres, an unprecedented increase of 61 per cent.

The Burj Khalifa has become the 16th building to hold the title of the 'World’s Tallest' and stands an additional 773 metres higher, or 15 times taller, than the world’s first 'tall building' (the Home Insurance Building completed in Chicago in 1885).

125 years on from the completion of the first skyscraper, the tall building typology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. The Burj Khalifa exemplifies four major trends in current tall building construction, with respect to location, function, structural material and height.

Until the 1990s, the world of tall buildings was dominated by the North American continent and the United States in particular. In 1990, 80 per cent of the world’s tallest 100 buildings and nine of the tallest ten buildings were located in North America. Two decades later, these numbers have fallen to 35 per cent and two respectively. This trend is the result of a dramatic (and continuing) increase in tall building construction in both Asia and the Middle East.

The Burj Khalifa becomes the third consecutive 'World’s Tallest' to be located outside North America.

The mixed-use but predominantly residential function of the Burj Khalifa is also in line with current tall building trends. 20 per cent of the world’s current 100 tallest buildings are now mixed-use; a figure which will increase dramatically in the next few years, as a large number of mixed-use buildings complete around the world.

The Burj Khalifa is the first mixed-use building to hold the 'World’s Tallest' title.

For many years, steel was the material of choice for the tall building, a fact displayed in the first twelve 'World’s Tallest' buildings. Currently, composite, concrete and mixed-structure construction is much more prevalent in tall buildings. Only 24 per cent of the world’s current 100 tallest buildings contain a purely steel structural system, down from 57 per cent in 1990.

As exemplified by the Burj Khalifa, the average height of supertall buildings is also increasing. The number of completed supertalls (buildings over 300 metres in height) now stands at 44, up from 11 in the year 1990. This figure is predicted to increase significantly over the next decade, with 70 projects 300 metres or taller currently under construction internationally.

In addition to becoming the 'World’s Tallest', in the primary height category of 'Height to Architectural Top', the Council confirms that the Burj Khalifa has surpassed previous record heights in the 'Height to Tip' and 'Highest Occupied Floor' categories and lists these heights at 829.84 metres (2722.57 feet) and 584.50 metres (1917.65 feet) respectively. The building also contains a record-breaking number of floors, at 163; a record previously held by New York’s World Trade Center Towers at 110 floors.

The Burj Khalifa’s observation deck becomes the second highest in the world at 452.10 metres (1483.27 feet), surpassed only by that of the Shanghai World Financial Center at 474 metres (1555.12 feet).

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, based at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, is an international not-for-profit organisation supported by architecture, engineering, planning, development and construction professionals.-TradeArabia News Service