228-story building for Abu Dhabi?

The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that a $3.5bn, 224-story skyscraper is "under consideration by an Abu Dhabi planning committee". See the story here. (The Burj Dubai, tallest building in the world, is about 162 floors...)

The source of the story is architect Tommy Landau, who says the tower is "envisioned for a man-made island in Abu Dhabi, if leaders of the oil-rich emirate decide they want to make a statement to the rest of the world and perhaps one-up neighboring Dubai".

The building would have 11 million square feet of space and would have a "massive clock mounted at the same height as the top of New York's Empire State Building", which would only be halfway up the proposed building. It also would create more energy than it uses.

Now, architects have a tendency to start talking well before any deals are signed, but it's still an interesting project to look at. Despite Abu Dhabi's attempts to be less brash and suprelative-seeking as its neighbour to the north, there have been a few examples of iconic towers under consideration.

One of them was the Crystal Palace - an epic structure that would have been built at Mina Zayed by Aldar Properties. I profiled it in this blog post a few months ago: "Seven designs that were never built". The other is planned for Lulu Island - an "elongated oyster shell" tower. See an article about that one here.

There are plenty of other buildings that are iconic in their own way, like the leaning tower at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre and the Sun and Sky towers on Reem Island. But none of these are out to capture a world record in the way that Landau's tower would.