This is the guy who figures out how to build things like the Burj Dubai. If you're interested in architecture or structural engineering, it's a very cool read. Money passage comes at the end:"The initial scheme was for a building of about 1,800 feet, 317 feet taller than the Petronas Towers. Yet the clients made a request: Overengineer the foundation, just in case we change our minds. Which the clients did. Repeatedly. On trip after trip to Dubai — even after a hole was dug and giant caissons were set 150 feet into the sand, even after the building began to rise, a floor every three days, into the desert haze — the SOM team kept getting the same request: Can you make it taller?...
The final height of the Burj will remain secret until its completion in 2009. SOM's managing partner George Efstathiou brags that it'll be as high as the Sears Tower and the Hancock Center stacked on top of each other (about 2,600 feet). Others say it could be taller — more than 3,000 feet. Baker thrills at the growing reality of it, but every once in a while he raps his knuckles on the table. "Quite frankly, I often urged the client to, you know — We can stop here, right?'" Baker says with a chuckle. "But they kept on pushing for taller and taller, and they were looking at me to see when I turned pale — so they'd know where to stop.""
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