Design unveiled for new world's tallest tower

Nakheel is to trump rival Emaar Properties in the contest to build the world's tallest building, with the Dubai-owned developer on Sunday unveiling plans for a tower that will dwarf the Burj Dubai.

Nakheel is poised to build a tower that will be more than one kilometre high, as part of a 140 billion-dirham ($38.12 billion) project that will include the world’s first inner city harbour, company executives said.

Emaar's Burj Dubai, currently the tallest man made structure in the world at over 630 metres, is expected to be up to 900 metres tall upon completion in early 2009. The company has refused to reveal its final height.

At a launch event on Sunday night, Hollywood movie stars Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones joined company officials and local dignitaries as a huge model of the structure was revealed.

"It will be ambitious, creative and innovative," chief executive Chris O’Donnell said of the Nakheel Harbour & Tower, which will be funded through a combination of private land sales and other project financing.

The development, located at the intersection of Sheikh Zayed Road and the $11 billion Arabian Canal currently under construction, will cover an area of more than 270 hectares and eventually house more than 55,000 people.

"It is four towers contained in a single structure connected by sky bridges,” O’Donnell said.

Nakheel said the project will take more than 10 years to complete, but with some stages coming on line much earlier.

It will include 19,000 residential apartments, ranging from affordable family homes to exclusive penthouses, it said.

High speed shuttle lifts will enable visitors to see the sunset twice, from the bottom and again from the top of the tower, it added.

Sources at Australian architects Woods Bagot told Arabian Business in April that Nakheel was planning to build a 1,200-metre high tower on the Arabian Canal.

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