Profile: Burj Dubai

 - Height is being kept secret but will be more than this estimate: 700 metres

- The number of floors is also a secret but likely to be at least 180 floors

- Samsung Corporation from South Korea is main building contractor

- Estimated construction cost. The whole Dubai Downtown development is costing around $20 billion and will contain 30,000 homes and the world's largest shopping mall, The Dubai Mall $1 billion

- Many of the lower floors will be taken up by a 175-room Armani Hotel. In addition there will be 144 luxury residential suites designed by Giorgio Armani and kitted out with his home furnishing line

- Floors 17 to 108 will have 800 private apartments. These sold out within eight hours

- Most of the higher floors will be offices and private suites

- An observatory 442 metres above ground on the 124th floor will be open to the public ? the highest publicly accessible observation deck in the world

- There will be a club on floors 144 to 146

- Inspiration for the design was derived from the flower of the Hymenocallis plant that is widely cultivated in Dubai.

- Built of glass, aluminium, concrete and steel

- Much of the external surface is made of factory-produced unitised panels. Made of aluminium, glass and various brackets, they interlock on site and are up to two storeys tall. They improve quality and speed up building work

- Tip of the spire will be visible 60 miles away

- The rods that reinforce the structure weigh a total of 31,400 tonnes and laid end-to-end would stretch more than a quarter of the way around the world

- Water system will supply about 250,000 gallons per day

- The building's external surface is the size of 17 football fields

- The concrete used is equivalent to a solid cube of concrete 61 metres in size or a 1.5-metre wide pavement 1,200 miles long. It weighs the same as 100,000 elephants

- Peak electricity demand of the building is the same as 360,000 100-watt light bulbs