Jeddah Tower
Jeddah Tower is a megatall skyscraper under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Located in the north of the city, it is the centrepiece of the Jeddah Economic City project. Jeddah Tower is planned to be the first building and, upon completion, would become the world’s tallest building or structure, standing at least taller than the Burj Khalifa.
The design, created by American architect Adrian Smith, who also designed the Burj Khalifa, incorporates numerous unique structural and aesthetic features. The creator and leader of the project is Saudi Arabian prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who is the chairman of Kingdom Holding Company. KHC is a partner in the Jeddah Economic Company, which was formed in 2009 for the development of Jeddah Tower and City.
Construction progress was halted in January 2018, when building owner JEC stopped structural concrete work. At the time, approximately one third of the tower had been completed. The halt resulted from labor issues with a contractor following the 2017–2019 Saudi Arabian purge and the COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2023, a new request for proposals was issued for completion of the delayed project. After nearly five years of inactivity, development work resumed in 2023. Construction restarted in January 2025, and the building is expected to be completed as early as 2028.
Site
Jeddah Tower's plot, along with surrounding buildings, will be the first of a three-phase Jeddah Economic City development. The three-phase project was proposed for a large area of undeveloped waterfront land with an area of. The area is located roughly north of the port city of Jeddah. Jeddah Economic City was designed by HOK Architects, and is estimated to cost at least SR75 billion and take around ten years to build.The development is envisioned to grow into a new district of Jeddah. The second phase of the project will be the infrastructure development needed to support the city, and the third phase has not yet been revealed.
The focal point of the development and Jeddah Tower's primary use will be to house a Four Seasons hotel, Four Seasons short-rental apartments, Class A office space, and luxury condominiums. The tower will also have the world's highest observation deck. Although the Jeddah Economic City plot is nearly isolated from the current urban core of Jeddah, no land tracts of such size were available closer to the city. Northward is generally considered the direction in which the city will spread in the future.
Construction history
In May 2008, soil testing in the area cast doubt over whether the proposed location could support a skyscraper of the proposed one-mile height, and MEED reported that the project had been scaled back, making it "up to shorter". Work on the foundation was scheduled to begin towards the end of 2012. Statements that construction would soon begin were made starting in 2008. In August 2011, the start of construction was slated as "no later than December". This meant the tower was expected to be completed in 2017, though at that time it was also possible that it could still have been completed by the date the media continued to publish, which was the prior estimate of late 2016. Only if construction had begun promptly and gone smoothly could completion in late 2016 have been achieved.Reports in 2009 suggested that the project had been put on hold due to the 2008 financial crisis and that Bechtel was "in the process of ending its involvement with the project". Kingdom Holding Company quickly criticized the news reports, insisting that the project had not been shelved.
Architect selected
In March 2010, Adrian Smith of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture was selected as the preliminary architect. Later, when the proposal was more serious, they won a design competition between eight leading architectural firms, including Kohn Pedersen Fox, Pickard Chilton, Pelli Clarke Pelli, and Foster + Partners, as well as the firm Smith formerly worked for, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which was the final competitor in the competition before AS + GG was chosen. In addition to Burj Khalifa, Adrian Smith has designed several other recent towers; the Zifeng Tower in Nanjing, China, the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, and the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, as well as the Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou, China. The four buildings are all among the forty tallest in the world. Furthermore, the Pearl River Tower is a unique tower that was originally designed to use zero net energy by drawing all its needed power from wind, sunlight, and geothermal mass, though this design goal was not fully achieved.In October 2010, the owners signed a development agreement with Emaar Properties PJSC. The final height of the building was questionable, but it was still listed to be over 1 kilometre. Kingdom Holding said construction was progressing.
Designs for the foundation were in place by early August 2011 and the contract for the piling was tendered. On 16 August 2011, Langan International officially announced their involvement and that the foundation and piling had to be uniquely designed to overcome subsurface issues such as soft bedrock and porous coral rock, which normally could not support a skyscraper without settling. The foundation is similar to that of the Burj Khalifa, but larger; it is expected to average around deep with a concrete pad of area around. The concrete must have low permeability to keep out corrosive salt water from the Red Sea. Its depth and size are also considered to be an indicator of what the tower's final height will be. The piles will be up to deep and the pad over across, yet the building, which will weigh over, is expected to settle. The idea is that it settles evenly enough so that the building does not tip or put undue stress on the superstructure. Computer modelling programmes performed tests at the site to confirm that the foundation design would work. A later design for the foundation, to be constructed by Bauer in 2013, calls for 270 bored piles up to deep, which have to be installed into the difficult ground conditions. Some materials needed for the structure are of concrete and of steel.
Approvals
In March and April 2011, several news agencies reported that the Mile-High Tower design had been approved at that height and that the building would cost almost US$30 billion. This design was going to be drastically larger than the current design, with a floor area of, and would have used futuristic wind-aversion and energy-producing technology for sustainability. It and the surrounding city would have had the ability to accommodate 80,000 residents and one million visitors, according to RIA Novosti.On 2 August 2011, it was publicly announced by Kingdom Holding, the investment company, that a contract had been signed by Saudi Binladin Group, that construction was going to start soon, and that the tower was expected to take 63 months to complete. While the official construction estimate was expected to take five years and three months, others calculated that it will take over seven years, based on the duration of Burj Khalifa's construction.
Contractors selected
In early August 2011, the Binladin Group was chosen as the main construction contractor with the signing of an SR4.6 billion contract, which is less than it cost to build the Burj Khalifa. New renderings were revealed, and on 2 August it was widely reported that the project was a go at the height with a building area of, and will take 63 months to complete. The announcement of the main construction contract signing caused Kingdom Holding Company's stock to jump 3.2% in one day, in addition to KHC already having reported a 21% rise in second-quarter net profit. Gordon Gill and Adrian Smith were also confirmed as the architect. The landscaping contract for the Jeddah Tower was awarded to Landtech Designs, a US-based company, which was tasked with irrigating of green space, to be collected through rainwater.Financing for the Jeddah Tower was complete by September 2012; Talal Al Maiman, chief executive officer and managing director of Kingdom Real Estate Development Co., said it had taken 20 months to gather all the investors. The next month, Kingdom Holding awarded contracts totalling $98 million, and Subul Development Company paid $66.5 million for some land on the site. The Kingdom Riyadh Land project, a mixed-use commercial and residential development, will generate more than $5.33 billion of total investment and will house up to 75,000 people. The final master plan contract was awarded to Omrania & Associates and Barton Willmore. Bauer, a German Foundations equipment manufacturer and contractor, was awarded a $32 million contract to support the initial phases of construction of the Jeddah Tower, including the installation of 270 bored piles measuring in diameter.
The Jeddah Economic Company appointed the joint venture of EC Harris and Mace to manage the project in early 2013. The Saudi Water Company also signed a 2.2 billion-riyal, 25-year deal with JEC to supply of treated and drinking water per day.
Construction begins and delays
Construction started on 1 April 2013. The pilings were completed that December, allowing above-ground construction to commence in September 2014.In late 2017, the owner of Kingdom Holding Co, which owns 33% of the tower, and the chairman of the Saudi Binladen Group, which owns 17% and is the primary contractor, were both arrested as part of the 2017 Saudi Arabian purge. Construction of the tower continued, although some senior managers at Kingdom Holding were redirected to other projects. In February 2018, Mounib Hammoud, CEO of Jeddah Economic City, said that construction was continuing and that they hoped to open the tower by 2020. The walls had risen to by October, with the core reaching 60 storeys; at the end of the year, the reported height was.
Building owner JEC halted structural concrete work in January 2018, with the tower about one-third completed, due to labour issues with a contractor following the Saudi Arabian purge. As a result, work on the tower became stalled. Two months later, Kingdom Holding Company signed a deal with Orange Business Services to provide information and communication technology infrastructure to Jeddah Tower, and construction resumed moved forward after the delay. Work was also stalled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which ultimately led to a years-long delay.