Saudi Arabia - 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 October 2023

Fantasy on Demand: The Temptation of Text-to-Image AI

Julia Nagele

This paper explores the implications of text-to-image artificial intelligence (T2I AI) on architectural design practice. It begins with an overview of generative artificial design. It...

16 October 2023

Humanizing High Density

CTBUH Research

The theme “Humanizing High Density—People, Nature & the Urban Realm” for the CTBUH 2023 International Conference comes at a pertinent moment: Today intersecting are a...

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...

03 April 2023

Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2022: World Surpasses 2,000 Buildings of 200 Meters or Greater Height

CTBUH Staff

This report shows that 147 buildings of 200 meters’ height or greater were completed in 2022, a 25 percent increase from 2021, when 118 such...

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...

30 January 2020

Tall Building Predictions for 2020

CTBUH Research

The combined brains of the CTBUH editorial and database staff boldly predict what might happen across the global skyscraper industry in 2020. Check out our...

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...

01 December 2016

Stack Effect in High-Rise Buildings: A Review

Sergey Mijorski, SoftSim Consult Ltd.; Stefano Cammelli, BMT Fluid Mechanics Ltd.

This technical paper presents a detailed review of the stack effect phenomenon and of the associated implications pertaining to the design and construction of high-rise...

17 October 2016

Enhancing Social-Cultural Sustainability in Tall Buildings: A Trace from Vernacular Houses

Amer Al-Jokhadar & Wassim Jabi, Cardiff University

In the age of globalization and continuous urbanization, architects have a greater responsibility to design buildings with comfortable and sustainable environments. However, solutions should not...

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...

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

A Tale of Towers and Cities: A Contextual Approach to Vertical Urbanism

Louis Becker & Julian Chen, Henning Larsen Architects

While the ever increasing global interchange of capitals and ideas have created immense opportunities and growth in cities around the world, the physical manifestation of...

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

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...

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

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

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

Iconic Office Tower Propels Saudi Arabia into the New Global Century: Challenges and Innovations

Roger Soto, HOK; Basem Al-Shihabi, Omrania & Associates

As the centerpiece of the King Abdullah Financial District, the Capital Market Authority (CMA) Tower is evidence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s economic diversification...

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...

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...

16 September 2014

Examining King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD)

Julian Chen, Jacob Kurek & Claude Bøjer Godefroy, Henning Larsen Architects

The quality of space between buildings has become increasingly determinative in the success of any new urban district. This paper explores the viability in creating...

16 September 2014

Human Scale in Vertical Urbanism

Sudhir Jambhekar & Edward Mayer, FXFOWLE Architects

As global cities continue their horizontal sprawl, climate change bears down on our finite natural resources, and energy costs and population growth soar, it is...

16 September 2014

Sky Bridges – Pedestrian Circulation Through the Urban Fabric

Bashar Kayali & Michelle Bacellar, Al Ghurair Construction

Interconnecting sky bridges provide the building occupants and pedestrians an alternative to using vehicles as a way of transport in the urban fabric. In extreme...

14 November 2013

The Middle East: 20 Years of Building Skyscrapers

CTBUH Research

Twenty years ago, the Middle East contained only one skyscraper over 150 meters in height. It is now estimated that by the end of 2015...

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 April 2013

Fast-growing Saudi Arabia Embraces Tall Buildings

John Harris, Jones Lang LaSalle

Amid a rapidly changing cultural and economic landscape in Saudi Arabia, John Harris, co-head of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Saudi Arabia office, discusses the shifts in...

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....

31 December 2012

Year in Review: Tall Trends of 2012

Kevin Brass, Antony Wood & Marty Carver, CTBUH

For the first time in six years the number of tall buildings completed annually around the world declined as the effects of the global financial...

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...

20 September 2012

Interactive Aerodynamic Design of Supertall Buildings

Stefano Cammelli, BMT Fluid Mechanics; Mark Lavery, Buro Happold

In order to maximize the benefit of early stage wind tunnel tests, BMT Fluid Mechanics and Buro Happold have respectively developed tools which enable dynamic...

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...

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

Innovative Solutions to Complex Geometric Forms in Tall Buildings

Mark Lavery, Buro Happold & Spencer Robinson, Camden Mill

There is an trend in tall buildings towards ever more complex geometric forms, as clients and architects look to distinguish their buildings. That such buildings...

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...

13 April 2011

Tall and Urban: An Analysis of Global Population and Tall Buildings

CTBUH Research

Tall buildings are spreading across the globe at an ever-increasing rate. This study demonstrates the relationship between population and tall buildings across those countries and...