Jeddah - The Skyscraper Center

22 December 2023

Remembering Charles H. Thornton, 2012 Fazlur Khan Lifetime Achievement Awardee

Charles Thornton & Richard Tomasetti

This edition of Talking Tall is an interview from the CTBUH archives. The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat would like to remember Charles...

16 May 2023

The Economics of Record-Breaking Height

Jason Barr & Peter A. Weismantle

This paper reviews the development history of record-breaking skyscrapers to better understand their economics. Given how tall they are, the supposed reason for their construction...

03 April 2023

The Economics of Record-Breaking Height

Jason Barr & Peter Weismantle

This paper reviews the development history of record-breaking skyscrapers to better understand their economics. Given how tall they are, the supposed reason for their construction...

22 August 2022

Structural Design of Iconic Tower, Egypt: Culmination of a Concrete Optimization Process

Tarek Hassan, Yehia El-Ezaby & Charles Malek, rector Dar Al Handasah Consultants (Shair and Partners)

This paper presents an overview of a process of optimizing concrete mixture for tall buildings, culminating in the design of the Iconic Tower, the key...

20 October 2018

The Middle East: 30+ Years of Building Tall

CTBUH Research

The Middle East region is hosting its first CTBUH International Conference since 2008. In that year, there were 119 completed buildings of 150 meters or...

08 August 2017

Improving Energy Performance In Gulf-Region Residential High-Rises

Noura Ghabra & Dr. Lucelia Rodrigues, University of Nottingham; Dr. Philip Oldfield, The University of New South Wales

Energy consumption in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has been rising over the last four decades. The residential building sector alone accounts for more than...

17 October 2016

Saudi Arabia, Jeddah City and Jeddah Tower

Mounib Hammoud, Jeddah Economic Company

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has embarked on an ambitious project to construct the world’s tallest building, Jeddah Tower. Surrounding the kilometer-plus building will be...

17 October 2016

Mega Size Mixed-Use Projects: Redefining Vertical Urbanism

Dennis Poon & Larry B. Giannechini, Thornton Tomasetti

As the draw to urban centers increases drastically with financial growth and global influence, emerging markets seek to develop salient markers of success and hope....

01 December 2015

Geotechnical Parameter Assessment for Tall Building Foundation Design

Harry Poulos, Coffey Geotechnics; Frances Badelow, Mott MacDonald

This paper discusses the design parameters that are required for the design of high-rise building foundations, and suggests that the method of assessment for these...

26 October 2015

Case Study: Kingdom Tower, Jeddah

Peter Weismantle & Alejandro Stochetti, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

During the spring of 2009, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG) began working on a prototype of a mile-high tower. With an eye to...

26 October 2015

Kingdom Tower / Kingdom City: History in the Making

Mounib Hammoud, CEO, Jeddah Economic Company

Jeddah Economic Company has embarked on a mission to construct Kingdom Tower, which will be the tallest building in the world upon completion. The kilometer-plus...

26 October 2015

The Tall Building Impact: From Local to Global

Adrian Smith & Peter Weismantle, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

AS+GG’s Director of Supertall Technology interviews AS+GG Partner Adrian Smith about the impact that supertall buildings have on a city’s identity, economy, ecological impact, and...

26 October 2015

Adopting a Program Management Approach to Maximize the Benefit of “Vertical Cities”

Keith Brooks, Julio Maggi, Derek Roy & Bryony Day, ARCADIS

Tall building construction can benefit from a programmatic approach. By looking at the overall development as a whole program of works, identifying the deliverables required...

26 October 2015

From Supertall to Megatall: Analysis and Design of the Kingdom Tower Piled Raft

George Leventis, Alan Poeppel & Konstantinos Syngros, Langan International LLC

As part of the booming development in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Langan international was hired to assist in all phases of soil investigation and...

26 October 2015

Elevator Designs for the Kingdom Tower

James Fortune, Fortune Shepler Saling Inc. Elevator Consulting

When it is completed in 2018, the mixed-use Kingdom Tower will become the new World’s Tallest Tower. It will contain multiple, stacked mixed-use population zones,...

26 October 2015

Carbon-Fiber Hoisting Technology

Santeri Suoranta & Jeff Montgomery, KONE

The ability to build ever higher has always pushed available technologies to their limits, including elevator technology. Traditional elevators utilizing steel ropes are limited by...

24 August 2015

World’s Highest Observation Decks

CTBUH Research

Perhaps no element of a tall building is more closely related to the pure pleasure of standing high in the sky and taking in the...

31 December 2014

Interactive Study on Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2014

Daniel Safarik, Antony Wood, Marty Carver & Marshall Gerometta, CTBUH

An All-Time Record 97 Buildings of 200 Meters or Higher Completed in 2014 and 2014 showed further shifts towards Asia, and also surprising developments in...

06 November 2014

The Competition for the Tallest Skyscraper - Implications for Global Ethics and Economics

Christopher Michaelson, University of St. Thomas

An iconic skyscraper has aesthetic significance that may have meaning for other aspects of human experience – serving, for example, as an expression of cultural...

01 April 2013

Case Study: Kingdom Tower, Jeddah

Peter Weismantle & Alejandro Stochetti, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, will be the tall building to go where no building has gone before – beyond 1,000 meters. For the...

01 March 2013

Debating Tall: The Pros and Cons of Reaching for the Sky

This issue’s cover story on Kingdom Tower details the latest quest for the industry to reach new heights. However taller doesn’t always lead to better....

21 September 2012

Kingdom Tower: A New Icon for Saudi Arabia

Talal Al Maiman, Kingdom Real Estate

Kingdom Tower - expected to be the world’s tallest building, at over 1,000 meters, when completed in 2017 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is outlined in...

19 September 2012

From Jin Mao to Kingdom: Search for an Asian Supertall Vernacular

Adrian Smith, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

The paper traces the evolution of Mr. Smith’s career as a designer of supertall buildings, the Jin Mao Tower (1999) to Kingdom Tower, to be...

19 September 2012

20 Years of High-Rise Fire Safety: From Jin Mao to Kingdom Tower

James H. Antell, RJA; Peter A. Weismantle, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

This paper will discuss the evolution of fire safety concepts in the recent generation of high rise buildings starting with “early” 1990’s designs in China...

27 January 2012

Debating Tall: A Supertall Future in the US?

Adrian Smith, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture; Paul Beitler, Beitler Real Estate Services LLC

In 1990, only 11 buildings in the world could be counted as a “supertall” (defined as a building over 300 meters tall), and all but...

18 January 2012

The Tallest 20 in 2020: Entering the Era of the Megatall

Nathaniel Hollister & Antony Wood, CTBUH

Within this decade we will likely witness not only the world’s first kilometer-tall building, but also the completion of a significant number of buildings over...