CONSTRUCTION & TECHNOLOGY

Photographer Gerald Donovan spent a grueling three and a half hours baking in the sun to take 4,250 shots of the city with his Canon 7D.

The three towers perched at this easternmost end of the New Silk Road form the new HQ of Samsung, the conglomerate that drives more than one eighth of South Korea’s economy and whose flagship electronics division is poised to leapfrog Hewlett-Packard as the world’s biggest technology company. Thousands of miles west along the New Silk Road, soaring from the dunes of Dubai, is the world’s tallest building: the 828-metre-high Burj Khalifa, also brought to you by Samsung.

For the first time this year, Dubai investors will not be first to get a chance to buy in to Emaar Properties’ new project. Dubai’s largest developer will be launching The Address Residence Sky View II in Downtown Dubai on May 18, but the actual launch will take place simultaneously in three cities: London, Doha and Riyadh.

The lights of the Burj Khalifa will go out and cities across the nation will be plunged into darkness this evening as the UAE's landmark buildings join the Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House and New York's Times Square in observing the biggest climate change awareness event in the world.

The 107-storey tower, billed to be the tallest residential building on earth, is likely to be ready by late next year in the city that is also home to the 823 metres wonder Burj Khalifa. The 414-metre tall Princess Tower in Dubai's high-profile Dubai Marina will be ready for delivery by fourth quarter of 2011, its constructor has said.

Along with a 620-m landmark tower, 13 more high rises over 200 m will be constructed at an international business district in Seoul's Yongsan. A shopping mall of 1.04 million sq. m, which is six times the size of the COEX mall in Samseong-dong, also in the capital, will be built below street level.

Cities around the world take turns owning the title for the tallest skyscraper, the longest bridge or the deepest mine. Covering nearly every continent of the world, here’s our current list, which I’m sure will change over the next few years.

I was recently invited to the pre-launch of the Nokia N8 in the Middle East, which took place in Dubai, and while it was my first time handling the N8 and I came away pretty impressed, one thing I wanted to do was be able to test the camera. You can see the results below, with Burj Khalifa (the tallest man-made structure in the world), the Dubai Marina Walk, and the area around the Dubai Media One Hotel. Now keep in mind, this is a prototype, it wasn’t running firmware PR1.0, and apparently I was using the wide-angle 9MP resolution not the 12MP one.

Samsung C&T has demonstrated its technological edge in the Middle East, particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with the Burj Khalifa being one of the most notable examples. Burj Khalifa is the tallest man-made structure in the world, whose construction started midway through 2004 and was officially opened early this year to become the landmark of flourishing Dubai.

Six Construct, a Belgian company that helped to build the Burj Khalifa, and its Saudi partner, El Seif Engineering Contracting, are vying for the project against Australia’s Multiplex Construction and Saudi BinLadin Group, one of the biggest construction companies in the region