gulfnews.com

Dubai: The world's tallest tower, Burj Dubai, is slated to go as high as 200 floors, a company official revealed. "It has reached floor No 40. It is over 20 per cent of the total habitable floors," Abdullah M. Bin Lahej, Director of Construction for Emaar Properties, developer of the tower, told Gulf News.

This translates into nearly 200 habitable floors, dwarfing all other man-made structures and nearly double the height of the 442-metre Sears Tower in Chicago, which has the highest habitable floor at the 108th.

This means the building's height, which remains a well-kept secret, could go well beyond the estimated 750 metres if calculated on the standard height of an average floor.

Construction of the tower's superstructure, which began on April 15 last year, has reached the 40th floor, at a rate of more than nine days per floor.

This time-frame is expected to fall significantly as the higher the building goes, the narrower it becomes, thus reducing the amount of work per floor.

Bin Lahej said major components of the tower have already been sold out.