Although several countries around the world are trying to unseat Arabia Salud as the home of extravagant skyscrapers (Brazil just unveiled the world’s tallest residential tower), there are several projects underway in the Middle East that, when completed, will take time to be ousted. One is a project that must be defined: a tower two kilometers high. The other is the imposing, more earthly and conflicting skyscraper of Jeddah. And we also have The Line, but we have to see how it ends.
The Jeddah Tower, more than 1,000 meters high, has been stalled since 2018 due to the purge in Saudi Arabia, but officially the work has just resumed and it seems that, now, they are serious.
Vertical city. The objective of the Jedda Tower is simple: to look over the shoulder of Dubai’s 828-meter-high Burj Khalifa. Getting it… is no longer so simple. In 2011 it was announced that the architect of the Burj Khalifa -Adrian Smith- would be in charge of surpassing his previous work, but now in Saudi Arabia. The intention was to build a 1,500-meter-high tower in Jeddah, but after soil analysis, it was concluded that the ambition had to be reduced to a not inconsiderable 1,008 meters.
The idea is that it will be the heart of a new district in the city and will be a building that will house a Four Seasons hotel, rental apartments, high-end offices and luxury homes. It will also have shops, an observation deck (which will be the highest in the world) and the goal is to turn the tower into a kind of self-sufficient vertical city while functioning as a commercial engine for the land around it.
At the moment, there is little around the base of the tower
a challenge. Smith will repeat the triangular floor plan that he already designed for the Burj Khalifa, but more than a simple whim, it is a decision to provide stability to the building. And, unlike the pride of the United Arab Emirates, the shape of the Jeddah Tower will be conical. This will allow it to be more aerodynamic, something very important in order to better manage the wind vortices that occur at a certain height.
It is estimated that the building will have 59 elevators, five of them two-story, and the intention is to use the air pressure differences in the desert to cool the building efficiently, as well as an orientation in which none of the facades are oriented. directly to the Sun. The goal was to have it ready for 2018. How wrong they were in their predictions.
The purge. With the entire project firm, construction began on April 1, 2013. Construction did not go at a bad pace and, by the end of 2017, they had already built 252 meters. However, in 2018, plans fell apart when, with a third of the tower already completed, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman created an anti-corruption committee with the intention of centralizing political power rather than sharing it among Saudi elites. . One of those detained was Fahda bint Falah, Salman’s own mother.
This became known as the 2017-2019 Saudi Arabia purge and ended with 381 arrests of businessmen, government ministers and princes accused of bribery, extortion of officials and money laundering. In parallel, it seems that a death group operated to assassinate dissidents silently.
The state in 2021
Now yes, back to the chopping block. After several years with the works on pause, in September 2023 it seemed that they were going to resume because the developer had invited important contractors, both local and international, to present their candidacy to be able to finish the building. We didn’t know more about it… until now. Officially, the Jeddah Tower is moving forward, something they have communicated with a rendered video showing its design.
Initially, it was estimated that the building would cost $1.23 billion, but recent announcements indicate that the figure would have increased to $1.9 billion, of which about $290 million had already been paid. There is much, much left to do.
2028. With the heart of the Jeddah Economic City, a $20 billion macro project, underway again, work is expected to progress rapidly. On this occasion, the forecast is to have it ready by 2018, 10 years after the originally planned date.
When it is ready, we will see to what level the city around it is developed and if this colossus skyscraper with a completely glass facade remains as a desert plant (its design is inspired by them) or if, really, it is the nucleus of something. elderly. Also, at that point, we will have to see how The Line is doing, whose expected completion date is 2030 and which is not going too well.
Images | Omarnize05
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