Kingdom Tower

NANG THIS POST

Location /// Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Projected Height /// 3281-plus ft


This is a photo of the existing Kingdom Centre in Riyadh. Images of the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah are not yet publicly available.

This skyscraper was initially billed as the Mile-High Tower in 2008, though the record-setting height ambitions have since been cut by nearly 2000 feet. Updated design plans have not yet been revealed for the Kingdom Tower, but the winner of a design contest between Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture should be announced in a few weeks. Marshall Gerometta, of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the group that certifies supertall building heights, says that the Kingdom Tower probably is the best bet in the near term to overtake the Burj Khalifa. Funding appears secured for this building, which will be the centerpiece of a new $27 billion planned urban area in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, overseen and financed by the Kingdom Holding Company. The first mile-high setup called for the creation of two stabilizing mini-towers to support the main tower. The mini-towers, at nearly 1000 feet each, about the height of the Eiffel Tower, will be dwarfed by the central spire. Many supertall building tops have an "expected" lateral movement of 10 feet or so, and to mitigate this swaying effect, a massive, computer-controlled object called a damper will be placed within the mile-high structure. What the eventual building will look like and how it will be engineered remain open questions, though Gerometta says he heard the Kingdom Tower was going to represent "a new generation of skyscrapers."