The Burj Khalifa is the tallest tower in the world as of 2021.
On the entrance floor of the tower is placed the work of the artist Jaume Plensa "Voices of the World"; An installation of 196 cymbals representing 196 countries of the world. The installation seeks to present the Burj Khalifa as the embodiment of the cooperation of different nationalities for the construction of the tower, and its transformation into a meeting place for different and diverse cultures and nationalities. In their attempt to build the Tower of Babel of that time, God sentenced the people to be different in their culture and physical existence in space, the same difference that brought and still brings severe conflicts to the world.
On the entrance floor of the tower is placed the work of the artist Jaume Plensa "Voices of the World"; An installation of 196 cymbals representing 196 countries of the world. The installation seeks to present the Burj Khalifa as the embodiment of the cooperation of different nationalities for the construction of the tower, and its transformation into a meeting place for different and diverse cultures and nationalities. In their attempt to build the Tower of Babel of that time, God sentenced the people to be different in their culture and physical existence in space, the same difference that brought and still brings severe conflicts to the world.
It seems that the longing for size, or greatness, remains a primal desire, and despite the ancient punishment that condemned us to bloody humanity, humans managed to implement a construction project unprecedented in its dimensions. The Burj Khalifa is the embodiment of humanity's success in building something that is beyond the realms of imagination; The preoccupation with size and scale transcends human differences and succeeds in convening international efforts to build the Tower of Babel of the 21st century.
The sizes that make up the Burj Khalifa are so enormous that it seems that beyond a certain point that cannot be defined, phenomena develop that represent sizes that cannot be defined and quantified, and the Burj becomes an entity in itself. How big is Burj Khalifa? What is a size anyway? Size is an abstract concept that describes relationships; Seemingly an argument that every person walking the earth knows and recognizes. But when you dive into the world of the concepts of measurements and sizes, and especially in the way we perceive them and the ideas they represent - you get some idea of the rhizomatic relationships in the world, which are composed through infinite layers of both physical and dimensionless sizes.
The Burj Khalifa manages to be more than anything imaginable. The same imagination that made the contemporary Tower of Babel a reality did not happen by chance; It is the product of a goal-oriented policy to place Dubai on the global map as a world city. The installation of the cymbals at the entrance to the tower depicts a local and international effort to make the project grow stronger and resurrect, and many financial and human resources were invested to create a project that became a universal symbol and narrative of faith and overcoming challenges. The Burj Khalifa reminds us how everything is possible if we just want to, try hard enough, and do it together.
The existence of the Burj Khalifa affects the discourse of human beings, it affects social, economic, and political dimensions, and it blurs the boundaries of the frontier between existential relationships that break down and are built in a process without beginning or end. The Burj Khalifa functions as a hypertext of relationships that expand, change and deal with "new" elements of the size that did not exist before, such as technology, the Internet, and the use of social networks.
Indeed, the Burj Khalifa is a project that managed to do what it was intended to do - become a symbol. The enormous physical size of the Burj Khalifa has been translated into influences whose size surpasses its physical size, and they continue to develop and grow; The intangible dimensions of the Burj are not final and absolute. Dubai has managed to build the unbelievable, and everyone wants to take part - to visit there, take pictures there, document the experience of visiting or living there, shoot films and clips or even visit there "virtually" by touring Google Street View or Viewing the unimaginable masses of visual content depicting the Burj Khalifa across the internet. The eyes of the whole world are fixed in amazement at the architectural wonder in Dubai.
Human culture is flooded with symbols that represent ideas and narratives, both tangible and intangible. Any entity that wants to tell itself will boast a symbol that will represent its narrative. Symbols that express ideas and concepts that are not tangible will express, if possible, the physical dimension. Size is attributed to the way humans measure strength, power, sublime, or alternatively - lack of strength, weakness, laxity, and nothingness.
Size is embedded in the human culture not only as an element with physical dimensions; Greatness is also attributed to other representations of power such as success, wealth, influence, or anything else that can be said to be "more than the other". Size carries with it responsibility, by virtue of being an idea that teaches about ability and strength. Everything that represents greatness, comes with a symbol of size; Anything that is attributed to great power is characterized by "big", "high", "many", or "the most".
The Burj Khalifa is the embodiment of the aesthetics of power, its size has become a symbol. Dubai wanted to step forward more than anyone else and place itself on the global map as the reference point of the world, and it knew how to do this through architecture. The responsibility of size is not a practical responsibility, but a responsibility of an idea. Fulfilling the fantasy of size entails taking responsibility for the meanings derived from it - The Burj is not just a palatial building standing somewhere in the desert, its size enables the conditions for the architecture to exist beyond the physical dimensions and allows the building to be an entity, and this entity is responsible for the size and the power of the size. The human race to rise above the "most" will forever go on; the Burj Khalifa will not forever remain the tallest building in the world, but its status as a symbol of ambition that broke the boundaries of imagination will remain intact.
The Burj Khalifa reminds us that size does matter.
