News Archive
Communist relic scavenged for Burj Dubai
Released on 14/08/2008
Steel from an iconic communist building in East Berlin will be used to build the world’s tallest structure in Dubai.
Some of the steel from the Palast der Republik, East German leader Erich Honecker’s seat of government, has found its way to Dubai where it is being used on the US$4.1 billion Burj Dubai tower.
Berlin’s daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel revealed that the demolition of the Palast delivered some 25,000 tonnes of used steel. The material was transported to a smelting plant south of Berlin, where the iron girders were cut and melted down into handy blocks.
Much of the steel from the Palast is used by German car manufacturer Volkswagen to mould engine blocks, but it is also sold by steel dealers to various construction sites in the world. Dubai tops the customer list.
Scrap dealer Henryk Wetzel told Der Tagesspiegel that the recycled steel is picked up by a commodity broker, shipped via the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea on barges to Istanbul and then bought by a Turkish company that manufactures steel girders for the Burj Dubai.
Wolfgang Lindau, the head of the Schrott Wetsel steel smelter, said shipping steel to Dubai was important for his company. So far the company had shipped two barges with 1600 tons of steel from Berlin with the rest expected to arrive in November.
The Palast der Republik was built in 1976 and swiftly dubbed ‘Erich’s lamp shop’ by Berliners because of the 1,001 lamps that once hung in the main hall.
Construction of Burj Dubai began on September 21, 2004 and will be complete in 2010. The building is part of the development called ‘Downtown Dubai’. The tower's architect is Adrian Smith, who worked with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill until 2006. SOM is the architect in charge of the project.
