Construction of world’s tallest tower resumes in Jeddah

Work on what will become the world’s tallest skyscraper has officially restarted in the Saudi city of Jeddah, the Kingdom Holding Company has announced.

The building of the Jeddah Tower, previously called Kingdom Tower, started in 2013 and was supposed to be concluded by 2020. A break in construction works in 2018 was prolonged by the Covid-19 pandemic however, bringing any progress to a halt.

Now, construction has finally resumed from where it left off at the 64^th floor, with one new level being completed every four days according to developers. Although no exact height has been unveiled for the skyscraper, the aim is to make it the first tower in the world to surpass the 1,000-metre mark. At least 172 metre taller than the current highest building in the world, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa (828 metres), the Jeddah Tower is planned to also become the building with the most floors in the world – 252, 167 of which being habitable.

The great height of Jeddah Tower will require one of the world’s most sophisticated elevator systems. The complex will contain 59 lifts, including 54 single-deck and five double-deck elevators, along with 12 escalators. Lifts serving the observatory will travel at a rate of 10 metres per second in both directions. The relatively slower speed compared to other skyscraper elevators is expected to reduce the nausea people often get when using high-speed lifts.

Initially expected to cost $1.2 billion to construct, although the estimate is likely to have changed after the 6-year break in construction, the tower will be the centrepiece and first building on the $20 billion Jeddah Economic City development project. “We are creating an independent city … so that you don’t have to leave here. It’s changing the mindset of Jeddah”, Hisham Jomah, chief development officer of Jeddah Economic Company, told CNN in 2018, before works stopped.

Designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG), Jeddah Tower will be a mixed-use building featuring a luxury hotel, office space, serviced apartments, luxury condominiums and the world’s highest observation deck. Planned for the 157^th floor, a statement from AS+GG reveals the diameter of the terrace to be 30 metres, which would make it a little over 700 square metres.

The first 5 floors of the Tower will be used for retail, while floors 6 to 90 will be reserved for office spaces. Residences will take the 94^th to 114^th floors, with 500 apartments spread into 4 tiers of luxury. Besides having their own private entrance, apartments in tier 4 will be laced with gold. Floors 115 to 156 will be occupied by the Four Seasons Hotel with close to 200 rooms, several restaurants and other amenities.

This is just one of the many projects included in the Saudi Vision 2030, an ambitious development program started by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an attempt to diversify the country’s economy from fossil fuel. Reaching the target of 100 million tourists in 2023, the Kingdom has already adjusted its ambition and will now aim for 150 million annual visitors by 2030.

Several mega projects are being built across the country to attract tourists, including Neom, hailed as the “city of the future” when it was first announced in 2022. Despite recent doubts over the completion of Neom and of the Line, a 170-km-long belt of skyscrapers in the middle of the dessert, in particular, Saudi Arabia has promised all the projects will go ahead as planned and, in fact, the futuristic city has recently welcomed the first guests of a luxury resort on the Red Sea.

A new national airline, Riyadh Air, was also launched in March 2023, with the ambition of tripling Saudi Arabia’s air traffic to 330 million passengers by 2030 and turning the country into a regional travel hub. Moreover, tourism campaigns featuring football stars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have been developed to increase the international appeal of the destination. The country has been recently rumoured to even consider a partial lift of the ban on alcohol soon.