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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."
Comments about someone flying a plane into it, coming in 3... 2... 1....
The next time you go at the pump, think about that !
isn't the middle of a city a bad place for an observatory with all the light pollution and whatnot?
3280 feet / 5280 ft*mile^-1 != 2/3
Before somebody asks.
Yes, It will run Crisis !!!
That's nearly twice as tall as the Burj Khalifa according to the graphic in TFA 8-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
n/t
/disappointed
I assume they're building it on the site of the old Tower of Babel, as a memorial to those who lost their lives there some 6000 years ago...
Paying foreigners to build gigantic monuments isn't a great long-term strategy. When the oil dries up how is this stuff all going to be maintained in the middle of a desert wasteland. But I guess the current kleptocracy will be dead by then and don't really care. Just seems like they could spend money employing foreigners to teach their own citizens about engineering or whatever. But when you look at Dubai and how they have to import incredible amounts of water for their fake islands... you can only imagine when there's no more oil how it's going to be totally destroyed and the dolphins will be eaten for food by roaming nomads.
Too bad Gruber bit it in the first movie. A building this tall would surely keep him and McClane pretty busy for a sequel.
At least 173 meters (568 feet) taller, sight-seers on the tower’s observation deck could see how long it takes for their spit to hit the top of Burj Khalifa (this is, if they weren’t hundreds of miles apart).
Yes. We got it. Its taller.
Is it just me or do these super high skyscrapers look out of place when the surrounding buildings are so small? It seems they are more concerned about the record than the overall skyline. I also wonder if western tourist would be well received there.
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.
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!
Parts are restricted to non-muslims. Presumably not the parts westerners buy oil but Mekka is not a city known for its openness to visitors.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Wonder how many people $1.2 billion could feed. Think they'll be able to see Somalia from on top of that tall building. Could someone do the math on that?
Building the world's tallest tower is usually followed by a recession. Oh, oh.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
So the penthouses will probably sell for lots of millions of {insert currency here} value
but.....
I bet they don't say that you will need to park your {insert name of expensive car here} up to 1km away from your front door
...and that means extravagance should not be bounded, espeicailly in the oil-rich middle east (or Texas).
http://guide.theemiratesnetwork.com/living/dubai/images/the_palm/palm_jumeirah.jpg
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You take a express elevator that stops only at the sky lobby's and then switch over to a local one (some of them have local stacked on top of each other so they don't need lot's of space for all the elevators) other places have banks of elevators that only go to one set of floors.
The keypad system may be better for places where most of the elevators stop on all floors.
No, you'll put your eye out, kid."
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
So will anyone go there? If you like a drink, are female or gay, Christian or atheist is there any way you would go there unless you were forced to do so on business?
And once the oil does run out the reasons for doing so become even more remote.
Building a non-oil-based economy would require social and educational development, which in turn requires leadership, or in other words, insight and hard work by the ruling elites.
However building the tallest phallic symbol just requires throwing money at immigrant workers, and in the long run will accomplish nothing much except an impressive symbol of wasted wealth. But it leaves more playtime for the rulers, and a clear sense of accomplishment ("look at that!")... as opposed to actually empowering their people, which would probably be counter-productive to the rulers anyway, diluting their grip on the region.
If you want an apartment in Dubai, the Burj Kalafia has space available. Rates start at about $20K/year for a hotel-room sized apartment.
To be fair, I guess these structures are pushing the strength of materials, and a boxy type structure is probably out of the question.
In my opinion, there is something wrong when the west's best engineers and architects are designing structures in countries that train very few of their own engineers and architects. It seems to me an economic distortion that is a result of our oversized reliance on foreign oil. Our best and our brightest are often not working on building our own society. I am skeptical of the long term economic wisdom of our current system.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
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http://skyscraperpage.com/ is THE site on the web if your interested in these kinds of things.
they should thank america for blowing thier own economy on a war so they can build this tower....
I pay more right here in NY
The architect screams "Fuck! This wasn't the deepest well on Earth! It was a tower!"
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
. . . plenty of time to figure out how they are going to fly a plane into it. At that height, they might not need to do it themselves. Remember July 28, 1945 -- http://www.archive.org/details/Pa2107Empire. The risks of standing out in a crowd.
...little dicks.
A mega-skyscraper with a (presumably) large investment by "the Binladen Group, the Saudi construction giant owned by the family of Osama bin Laden". What could possibly go wrong?
"Saudi Arabia Begins Construction of [what will be the] Worldâ(TM)s Tallest Building
"The total cost for the tower is [estimated to be] $1.2 billion. It [will] feature a Four Seasons hotel, Four Seasons serviced apartments, luxury condominiums, top class office space and [what will be] the world's highest observatory."
That said, I predict financial failure IF it ever gets built because (news flash) almost no one wants to visit Saudi Arabia and those who want to won't be able to afford staying in that building.
This is what Arab nations do for fun, apparently: build ever taller and more opulent structures. Woo.
I'm no expert on middle east politics, but there seems to be some amount of conflict over there. Saudi Arabia seems to be among the friendlier countries, but there's no guarantee that they won't be attacked by some radicals who think the Saudis aren't Muslim enough or something. Or maybe the Saudis will piss off the Israelis. However you spin it, this building could conceivable make a nice big target for some terrorists.
So who would want to work there?
That's actually my biggest concern about these super tall structures. It seems like the more occupants you place in a single structure, the more you risk accidents that cause a need for evacuation (fire most obviously, but also such things as flooding from burst pipes or carelessness). If a far more efficient system of elevators isn't put together than what I normally see used, I'd worry about the safety of such buildings. I know we've got a pretty basic 22 story apartment building (former hotel) here in town that I occasionally get called out to for computer service calls, and quite a few older people in relatively poor health have moved in there. It only has 2 regular passenger elevators (and I believe a 3rd. freight elevator on an opposite wall), and at least one of the two primary elevators is often shut down for maintenance or repairs. You can expect to spend a good 4-5 minutes getting from an upper floor apartment to the lobby, in most cases, with all the people constantly going in and out. It already seems to me like it pushes the boundaries of "safe", as "run of the mill" as it is in height.
Plus, despite all the talk about real-estate becoming so scare we need these structures? I'm not sure there aren't diminishing returns past a certain number of floors. How much extra money does it cost to construct buildings like this to withstand high winds and to run utilities that far up and down to each room that needs them? Wouldn't you be better off building all of the buildings in the area with, say, 15 or 20 floors, vs. trying to have a few mega-structures like this?
someone's trying to take a peek at all the virgins they were promised...
Of course, there is a high coloration between building bib buildings and economic crash. Think of it as the last gasp of optimism. Think Empire State building, World Trade Center, Malaysia 10 years ago, Dubai a few years ago
And then they'd go back to starving again.
I heard it said once, and it seems true for the most part when describing populations: People don't starve, people are starved.
They are starved by communism (forced farm collectivation), a kleptocracy that keeps everything to the dictator and his supporters, wars that displace people and ruin crops, or they are purposely starved as part of a program by the rulers to suppress a certain demographic.
Donations of food will only temporarily alleviate the problem. A bomb dropped on the dictator's palace might be money better spent.
Now someone needs to make one with a volume of 3*3*3 KM
"Among investors is the Binladen Group, the Saudi construction giant owned by the family of Osama bin Laden."
As to feeding Somalis, assuming about 1 USD / day to feed a person, you could feed all of Somalia for 4 months
Free food for four months would, of course, bankrupt every farmer left in Somalia. So, at the end of that four months, the situation would be truly desperate, far worse than before.
Fortunately, however, if you sent the food to Somalia it would all go to the existing warlords and gang leaders who control the countryside-- there is no government in Somalia-- and little or none of it would actually go to feeding the people, except for those with enough money to buy it from the warlords. So the problem would solve itself.
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the Binladen Group will be creating a skyscraper?
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I never quite understood the claims that Somalia has no government. Isn't "warlord" just another term for "government, run as dictatorship, controlling a small area, without membership in the United Nations"? The only difference between Saudi Arabia and a Somali warlord is a matter of scale and the fact that the Saudis have more money.
Knock off each up-and-coming warlord before he can consolidate his power. In the perpetual confusion at the top, the people at the bottom will be able to organize themselves and begin providing food.
It costs about $30,000 total to deliver a smart bomb. Not a bad deal, much cheaper than just giving food.
Train the locals to kill the warlords, and help them do it.
This was really a somewhat factual joke. But sending food is pointless, since it doesn't help in the long run, and can even serve to help prop up the dictator or warlord who is the source of the starvation. Either he confiscates the food to prop up the regime, the food going to the people allows him to confiscate more local food to prop up the regime, or the people finally being fed can alleviate the dissatisfaction that could cause them to revolt.
In reality, both would be required. Train them and give them food and supplies to be strong enough to take out the warlord.
I can't think of an instance where just sending food ended long-term famine either. They will remain poor and starving until their political situation improves, and in these places that is not likely to happen through peaceful means.
Does tallest building really impress anyone anymore? How about doing something interesting with that money like doing something in space or starting new research laboratories. Skyscrapers are boring.
What better way for the ruling elites to tell the commoners how little they think of em than to waste a billion dollars on a giant concrete wang while they're starving and oppressed.
Shelley said it all.
huh, is it just me or is this ironicly a slap in the face?, The arabs blow up our twin towers then say fuck you and build the biggest ever
A country that would put me to death for my sexual orientation does not deserve to have such things. Fuck Saudi Arabia and their immoral sharia bullshit.
I've mostly heard people say Somalia doesn't have an effective government. I don't keep up on it much, but there are competing factions and at least one president that some people recognize. Depending on how you define terms, total anarchy could be government. Somalia has way more than that.
Man, you really need that seminar!
We need to crash planes into that fucker. Seriously, they need a taste of their own medicine.
I guess that means that it will be safe from Al Qaeda.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Wouldn't you be better off building all of the buildings in the area with, say, 15 or 20 floors, vs. trying to have a few mega-structures like this?
Yes, of course you would, if practicality and usefulness was your goal. But of course this building isn't about those things, it's about showing the world that the Saudis have the world's biggest, um, buildings.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Aren't buildings designed to sway?
I guess they gotta use image stabilization on a very large scale.
" the tower is a part of an economic initiative to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s economy by diversifying away from crude oil"
Without oil the country is a piece of land surrounded by very saline seas, where the only possible exports may be: ;-)
1) Salt water
2) Sand
3) Some electricity (from solar energy)
4) Dates
5) Some precious minerals from sand / rocks
6) Camel milk
And it can also export about 20 million ideologically brainwashed, violence mongering Wahhabi nomadic tribals whose ...
only ability is to feel that they have a superior spiritual culture in orthodox Islam. But I can't really blame them, they
have been like that for the past 5000 years (the last 1500 of which have been especially bloody because of the purported
religion of peace) and have too much sand to hide their already fried heads in. What are these idiots thinking exactly ?
where are they going to get the energy to run a post-oil economy or the water to quench the lifestyle of so many people
who are basically morons in their ability to understand the world, forget about how to think creatively to adapt to a changing
world
and average person in that country could ever afford to even stay a night at a hotel there, let alone live there, and few will be educated enough to work there in the office space
Oh well. Wanting to diversify their economy away from crude oil, they build a huge (admittedly stunning and beautiful) tower for those made rich by oil. I find no flaw in this logic whatsoever...
Government != responsible government...
Things like this and the island paradises they keep building is the real reason why gas is so high priced.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.