Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill make their own announcement: they’re designing the Kingdom Tower, but it won’t be a mile high.
Every blogger who gives a toot about sustainable building fell over themselves earlier this year to mock Saudi’s mile high tower. We all bought the story without really thinking about what such a tall building might look like; but there’s a very good reason we fell for what turned out to be a dirty news leak: absurd stuff like this actually happens in the Middle East.
Recently a billionaire Sheikh from Abu Dhabi etched his name – Hamad- into the sands of a one mile stretch of island. His self-aggrandizing graffiti is visible from space. And Dubai has the 2,651 foot Burj al Khalifa tower. Perhaps feeling left out of the cockshow, Saudi has now officially commissioned Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill to design a 3,280-foot spacescraper – skyscraper just doesn’t seem high enough- that will surpass the Burj as the world’s next tallest tower.
No restraint
World Architecture News recently announced that Dubai will not bid for the Olympics because it needs to focus on its own security and peace, showing uncharacteristic restraint. Saudi Arabia shows no such thing.
His Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and chairman of Kingdom Holding Company, today announced this newest addition to a slew of flashy Arab projects that always have disastrous environmental ramifications.
Part of the 17.4 million square foot Kingdom City development project, the Kingdom Tower alone will take up 5.7 million square feet of north Jeddah, a sea port town along the Red Sea and the gateway to Saudi Arabia’s holiest city Mecca.
Taller than the tallest
568 feet taller than the world’s current tallest building also designed by Adrian Smith while at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the Kingdom Tower will feature a Four Seasons hotel, Four Seasons serviced apartments, Class A office space, luxury condominiums and the world’s highest observatory.
Construction of the $1.2 billion tower is expected to begin as soon as possible and the entire Kingdom City project is anticipated to cost at least $20 billion.
More on Saudi Construction and Development:
All of Saudi Will Come to the Mile High Kingdom Tower
Saudi Arabia’s Green Construction Potential
Saudi’s Soaring Construction Industry could Negate Costly Water Investments
Perhaps if the prince were to have the tower built horizontally and extend it just a bit more, then hollowed it out, the structure could be used for socially productive purposes — rushing in food and other aid to the beseiged people of Somalia and elsewhere across the Gulf in the Horn of Africa, where masses are dying of hunger and disease.
That, at least, would bring some meaning to such obscene undertakings paid for with wealth derived from climate-changing fossil fuels.
Saudi Arabia is a bit late joining the race of building the world’s tallest tower. They are trying to copy the west, again, and again, just a little too late with all the absurdity of trying to be cool a few decades after the time.