Kingdom Holding to Build World’s Tallest Skyscraper in Saudi Arabia

Kingdom Holding has signed a $1.2bn deal with the Bin Laden Group to build the multipurpose Kingdom Tower on the outskirts of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The skyscraper was designed by a team led by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture.

The building will be over 1km in height and spread across an area of 530,000m². The tower will be a centrepiece and first construction phase of the Kingdom City development in north Jeddah.

Kingdom Tower will feature a high-end shopping mall, additional development parcels that accommodate commercial and high-density residential uses, offices, two luxury hotels and high-quality open spaces, including the central Tower Plaza.

The tower will have a three-petal footprint for residential units, and a tapering wings structure to offer an aerodynamic shape helping reduce structural loading due to wind vortex shedding.

The building will feature a high-performance exterior wall system that will minimise energy consumption by reducing thermal loads while three sides of the building features a series of notches that create pockets of shadow shielding parts of the building from the sun.