The tower was designed by Chicago firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. With a structure that evokes a bundle of leaves shooting up from the ground, the Kingdom Jeddah Tower will surpass by nearly 200 metres the Burj Khalifa, which has held the title as the world’s tallest free-standing structure since it opened in Dubai in 2010. Other projects elsewhere in the kingdom display the same audacity, such as Neom, a $500-billion commercial and industrial hub planned for an uninhabited region along the north-western coast near Jordan and Egypt. Set to be completed by 2020 (but the project stalled first in 2018 and then due to the pandemic and as of today, work is still frozen), the tower will be the tallest in the world, reaching one kilometre into the clouds, a physical manifestation of the ambition behind the Vision 2030 initiative to reduce the kingdom’s reliance on oil by diversifying its economy. As it slowly rises into the sky, the Kingdom Jeddah Tower under construction is setting the tone for a new district in the port city of the same name that serves as a gateway to the holy sites of Saudi Arabia.
