The 1000 Meter High Kingdom Tower

Right now, in Saudi Arabia, a skyscraper is being built that when completed will exceed 1 km in height. That's 3281 feet tall, taller than the Empire State Building (1,454 ft) and the Willis Tower** (1729 ft) combined. When completed in 2020, it will be the tallest building in the world. **Willis Tower was formerly known as the Sears Tower** I recently wrote an article about it:

Scraping the Sky: The 1 km-Tall Kingdom Tower

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has long served as a port for Muslims arriving by sea for the Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. With a population of 5.1 million, Jeddah is the second largest city in Saudi Arabia and ranks as the largest city on the Red Sea. If all goes as planned, by 2020 pilgrims flooding the city will be treated to a modern marvel, a skyscraper more than 1 km in height called the Kingdom Tower.

Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud, chairman and CEO of the Kingdom Holding Co., which is building the Kingdom Tower, has a vision for Jeddah. On a 5.2 km² plot, 20 km north of Jeddah, he plans to build Kingdom City, an ultra-modern district. At a cost estimated at $20 billion, it will take 10 years to construct with the Kingdom Tower built in the center. At 1 km in height, the Kingdom Tower will soar over Kingdom City and Jeddah. Preliminary estimation places the cost at $1.23 billion for the tower alone, a price that is most likely to go up if the $1.5 billion price tag of the current tallest building in the world (at 830 meters), the Burj Kalifa in Dubai, UAE, is any indication.

The tower, already under construction, is slated to be finished by 2020. It will be the first building to exceed 1 km in height with 167 floors and a floor area of 319,000 m². It will contain 59 elevators, 54 single and 5 double-deck elevators. The building will have the highest observation deck in the world at 500 meters. The architect is the American Andrain Smith, designer of the Burj Kalifa.

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