Saudi Arabia Constructing World's Tallest Building

kkleiner writes "1,000 meters, or 3,280 feet. That's two-thirds of a mile. When the Kingdom Tower is built on the outskirts of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia it will not only become the tallest building in the world, it will shatter the old record. The total cost for the tower is approximately $1.2 billion. It features a Four Seasons hotel, Four Seasons serviced apartments, luxury condominiums, top class office space and the world's highest observatory."

Re:Short-Sighted

[GameboyRMH]

When the oil dries up it's going to become a playground for the hyper-rich, at least that's their plan.

If that fails, well it'll make an awesome post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Observatory doesn't mean what I thought

[JoshuaZ]

When I first read that my first thought was that they would have telescopes up there. But all they mean is an observation deck. How disappointing.

More seriously, TFA discusses how this is part of the attempt by Saudi Arabia to move away from having an economy run off of oil. So this will have hotels and offices inside. I'm not sure that this is the best thing to do to get off of such things given how many basic problems Saudi Arabia has and how many fairly cheap things could be done to improve the education and general productivity of most of the population.

One thing that will be an obvious issue for such a large building is the exact layout and behavior of the elevator system. Some modern tall buildings have elevators that don't have simple up and down buttons but rather have a keypad where one punches in what floor one wants to go to and then the system optimizes which elevator to send to you rather than simply sending the next available elevator in that direction. This also allows elevators to travel at faster than the amount they can deaccelerate in a single floor. There's some non-trivial math involved in making such systems, and even making them slightly more efficient can have large scale payoffs simply due to the sheer number of people. As real-estate becomes more expensive and scarce throughout the planet, we're going to need to look more and more at how pre-existing very large buildings have handled these sorts of issues. So I'm happy that we have people like the Saudis doing this now long before we really need it.

We don't need a spec

[Whatsisname]

From TFA:

The final details of Kingdom Tower’s design are yet to be worked out, but construction is to begin immediately.

We all know how well that impacts budgets and schedules for software projects!

Re:observatory

[Mindcontrolled]

The most prominent ruin-to-be from the height of the empire, the days of peak oil. Give it 50 years and the few rag-clad scavengers populating the lower levels will wonder what the fuck anyone thought when they built this....

Re:We don't need a spec

[pz]

That and there's going to be hectares upon hectares of land that need to be cleared, barracks and sundry support systems for the thousands of construction workers that need to be built along with access roads and materials staging areas. If the weight budget has been finalized, the geological surveys for the foundation and maybe even the excavation can begin.

Re:Compensating for something?

[Dunbal]

Take heart - there's a theory about skyscrapers [wikipedia.org] that states that when a society starts building really big ones it's only a dozen or so years away from bankruptcy.

Re:observatory

[Dunbal]

You just don't get the idea of "bread and circuses" at all, do you? It's not about common sense. It's about getting votes. There are more poor people that rich people (so more votes from the poor), more uneducated people than educated people (so more votes from the uneducated). Populism works for the politicians, until the whole system is destroyed because it made no sense.