Burj Al Arab
The Burj Al Arab (Arabic: برج العرب,Tower of the Arabs) is a luxury hotel located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At 321 m (1,053 ft), it is the fourth tallest hotel in the world. The Burj Al Arab stands on an artificial island 280 m (920 ft) out from Jumeirah beach, and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. It is an iconic structure whose shape mimics the sail of a ship.
The beachfront area where the Burj Al Arab and Jumeirah Beach Hotel are located was previously called Chicago Beach[2]. The hotel is located on an island of reclaimed land 280 meters offshore of the beach of the former Chicago Beach Hotel[3]. The locale's name had its origins in the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company which at one time welded giant floating oil storage tankers on the site[2].
The old name persisted after the old Hotel was demolished in 1997. Dubai Chicago Beach Hotel remained as the Public Project Name for the construction phase of the Burj Al Arab Hotel until Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced the new name[4].
Construction of Burj Al Arab began in 1994. It was built to resemble the sail of a dhow, a type of Arabian vessel. Two "wings" spread in a V to form a vast "mast", while the space between them is enclosed in a massive atrium. The architect Tom Wright[5] said "The client wanted a building that would become an iconic or symbolic statement for Dubai; this is very similar to Sydney with its Opera House, or Paris with the Eiffel Tower. It needed to be a building that would become synonymous with the name of the country."[6]
The architect and engineering consultant for the project was Atkins, the United Kingdom's largest multidisciplinary consultancy. The hotel was built by South African construction contractor Murray & Roberts.[7]
The hotel is officially rated Five-Star Deluxe. However, it is frequently described as "the world's only Seven-Star hotel," although the hotel management claims to never have done that themselves. In the words of a Jumeirah Group spokesperson: "There's not a lot we can do to stop it. We're not encouraging the use of the term. We've never used it in our advertising."[10] According to the group, the "Seven-Star" notion was brought to being by a British journalist who visited the hotel on a pre-opening press trip. The journalist "described the Burj al Arab in her article as above and beyond anything she had ever seen and called it a seven-star hotel."[10]
Source: wikipedia.org
