Burj Dubai is now officially the world’s tallest building, its developers have announced.

A year and a half ahead of completion and already 1,680ft tall, the skyscraper means that the Middle East can now reclaim the honour of having the tallest man-made structure – a record held by Egypt’s ancient Great Pyramid of Giza - at a mere 481ft - for 4,000 years.

Paris’s Eiffel Tower took over from the Pyramid in 1889, reaching a height of 1,023ft, including the flag pole. Now Burj Dubai takes the number one slot from the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, which has topped the world’s skyline at 1,667ft since 2004.

The Burj’s final height is still a closely guarded secret. The tower is expected to be finished by the end of 2008, so we’ll have to wait and see. Developers Emaar will only say that its climb to the sky will cease somewhere above 2,275ft.

When complete, Burj Dubai will look something like the artist’s impression here and fulfill all four criteria needed to claim the honours as the world’s the tallest building, as stated by the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.

These are; the height of the structural top, the highest occupied floor, the top of the roof, and the tip of the spire, pinnacle, antenna, mast or flag pole.

“It’s a human achievement without equal,” said Mohammed Al Abbar, chairman of Emaar Properties. Al Abbar went on to say that the skyscraper would be an architectural and engineering masterpiece of concrete, steel and glass.

At the moment, it’s just a concrete object surrounded by tower cranes and rising from the centre of a dusty, hit and humid construction site, but when finished it will have more than 160 stories with 56 lifts.

There will be luxury apartments, swimming pools and spas, exclusive corporate suites, designer shops, the first hotel owned by the Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani, and a spectacular observation platform on the 124th floor.

Since work started on site, the tower has overtaken previous skyscraper record holders one after another: New York’s Empire State Building at 1,250ft opened in 1931, Sears Tower in Chicago at 1,451ft built in1974, Malaysia’s Petronas Towers at 1,483ft finished in 1998 and finally the Taipei 101 at 1,667ft opened in 2004, the same year that contruction on Burj Dubai first began.