The Burj Khalifa should never have been built.
On the pointlessness of ego-based architecture:
Was anyone actually impressed by this building as a feat of engineering when it went up in 2009? Obviously not — by this point, it is well understood that anything in architecture is possible if you have enough money, and the Burj Khalifa cost over $1.5 billion dollars.
I knew they trucked tons of sewage out of that building due to the lack of infrastructure. I didn't know that close to a third of it was basically hollow:
The city of Dubai did not green light a building that extends a half-mile into the air because of a pressing need for residences in downtown Dubai. To the contrary, the top 800 feet (244 meters) of the building, or 29% of the structure’s total height, is devoted to non-usable floors.