The Building So Tall It Had to Confuse the Wind (Burj Khalifa)

The Burj Khalifa is 828 metres tall - almost twice the Empire State Building - and at that height its real enemy is not its own weight. It is the wind. This is the Burj Khalifa, and its shape is a wind-beating machine. We cover why a tall, slender tower fears the wind more than gravity; vortex shedding, the rhythm of swirls that can rock a tower like a well-timed push on a swing; Bill Baker's Y-shaped buttressed core, where three wings brace each other; and the real trick - the spiralling setba