The first rule when building the world’s tallest tower is to keep its height a secret — otherwise you run the risk of someone beating you to it.

Emaar, the Dubai state-owned construction company, is tight-lipped on how tall the Burj tower is going to be, mindful that Kuwait is trying to outdo its neighbour with its own Silk City development. But Dubai insists that the Burj will be the world’s tallest — a least for a few weeks. To qualify, the Burj will have to be more than 508m (1,666ft) to overtake the current tallest building — the Taipei 101 in Taiwan.

Already half built, it is rising by a floor every two days. Construction will cost $1.1 billion (£550 million) and will have taken six years from digging the foundations 50 metres into the desert to its 2009 opening.

This cost is considered to be low partly because all 4,000 of the Burj construction workers are Indian immigrants. Their working conditions have attracted the attention of human rights agencies such as Human Rights Watch, which this year called for new legislation to protect workers’ rights and criticised the flaws in Dubai’s draft legislation. The group highlighted shortcomings for workers, such as their inability to strike. In its report, Building Towers, Cheating Workers, the organisation documented the Government’s refusal to allow construction workers to organise trade unions and to bargain collectively, and the recent passing of a resolution banning striking workers from employment for at least a year.

The Burj is expected to be completed in 2009 and sticks out of the skyline like a glass syringe. The height of the needle (which is not occupied space but will be the ultimate decider of height) is a secret, but the tower’s overall height is expected to exceed 700 metres.

While the building is unique in its height, it is merely another skyscraper in a city that resembles a science fiction fantasy more than a pearl-diving-cum-financial centre. Dubai wants to be bigger, better and brasher than the rest of the world, as part of the vision of the kingdom’s ruler — Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum — to build a financial and tourist centre to rival those of the West.

George Efstathiou, the managing partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the Chicago-based architect of the tower, said: “There is a flurry of activity for emerging economies to make themselves known by building the world’s tallest tower. That’s what Dubai has done.”

It takes two minutes in two express lifts to reach the top, shooting through 155 floors, a designer hotel, offices, luxury apartments and three swimming pools (one of which is for women only). The office at the top of the tower, which will have a circular view, is expected to house the chairman of Emaar. But, according to Emaar, the site area, to be known as downtown Dubai, has benefited from around $20 billion of investment in smaller towers and developments.

The base of the tower will house a luxury hotel designed by Giorgio Armani, with serviced apartments on top. Flats occupy the higher slice of the tower, with offices to the top. A two-bedroomed apartment on the 73rd floor recently sold for around $1.5 million. Any doubts about the level of demand for Dubai real estate are flatly rejected. Greg Sang, the assistant director of projects for Emaar, said that the structure is “pretty much sold out”.

“There will also be a premium for any property which can even see the tower. There really are very few places in the world where there is space to build this kind of development,” he added. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill also drew up plans for the Canary Wharf tower, and its older partners worked on the Sears Tower in Chicago.

According to Mr Efstathiou, “Wind is the biggest enemy of a tall tower. The trick is tuning a structure so that it has elastic movement, but the movement is not perceived by a human in the building.”

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