Burj Al Arab: How Dubai Drove 9,000 Piles Into the Seabed to Build a Sail-Shaped Hotel on a Man-Made Island

In 1994, Dubai began building something the world had never attempted: a luxury hotel on a man-made island, 280 metres offshore in the Arabian Sea. Engineers drove 9,000 steel piles 40 metres into the seabed — a process that alone took nearly three years — before the first steel column of the tower could rise.

Designed by Tom Wright of WS Atkins, the 321-metre Burj Al Arab was engineered as a steel diagrid exoskeleton shaped like a billowing dhow sail. Its distinctive white facade is a Teflon-coated fibreglass membrane (PTFE) — one of the first large-scale deployments of the material on a building, stretched across a V-shaped cross-brace that stabilises the structure against Arabian Gulf wind loads.

Inside, the world's tallest atrium soars 180 metres. The hotel opened on 1 December 1999, instantly redefining ultra-luxury hospitality and cementing Dubai's place on the global architectural map.