Burj Khalifa Spire 🆕 Fully Tested
Dubai gets high winds. Without a spire, the top of the Burj would sway violently. Inside the spire’s base is a massive tuned mass damper. It acts like a giant pendulum, swinging in the opposite direction of the wind to cancel out the motion. The spire is the building’s anchor .
While we call it a spire, it is functionally a 200-meter communications mast. It houses over a dozen TV, radio, and mobile network transmitters. Without it, your cell phone would drop the call the moment you walked into downtown Dubai. The View From Hell You might think the observation deck (At The Top) is high enough. That sits at 555 meters. The spire starts above that. burj khalifa spire
The top of the spire (the very tip) is not accessible to tourists. It is accessible only to a handful of climbers per decade for maintenance. To get there, you have to climb a series of vertical ladders bolted to the inside of the steel structure. At the very top, there is a tiny service hatch. Dubai gets high winds
No. It is the most extreme part of an extreme building. Without the spire, the Burj Khalifa would just be a very nice, very tall office block. With the spire, it is a needle threading the jet stream. It acts like a giant pendulum, swinging in
Let’s climb to the top—virtually, of course—and look at the unsung hero of the skyline: The "Fake" Floor? First, let’s bust a myth. People often claim the spire is "cheating" because it isn't a habitable floor. While it’s true you can’t rent an apartment inside the spire, calling it an antenna is like calling a Formula 1 car a lawnmower because it has an engine.