One extreme needle surrounded by newer glass spikes.
Dubai is a desert of modern spikes ruled by one extreme needle. Burj Khalifa dwarfs everything: a stepped, star-plan tower that keeps going until it becomes a pin. Nearby glass supertalls form a secondary cluster of varied crowns. Off to one side, Burj Al Arab is a sail — a curved, isolated hotel that does not look like an office slab. The ground line is flat; there are no hills and no historic domes. If one building is absurdly taller than its neighbours and a sail stands apart, it is Dubai. Tokyo’s two radio towers and Hong Kong’s mountain wall are different silhouettes entirely.