World's tallest building to house Four Seasons hotel and residences

The Burj al Arab, Dubai, the Armani Hotel within the Burj Khalifa and the Ritz Carlton within Hong Kong’s new ICC tower have all variously laid claim to being the world’s tallest or highest hotel. Now it has been announced that the latest addition to the superstructure canon – Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture’s Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is to house a Four Seasons Hotel.

Standing over 1,000 meters tall, Kingdom Tower will be the centerpiece of Kingdom City – a 5.3million m2 development in north Jeddah. The tower’s height will be at least 173 meters taller than the world’s current tallest building, Dubai’s 828-meter-tall Burj Khalifa, which was designed by Adrian Smith while at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

As well as the  Four Seasons hotel, Kingdom Tower will feature Four Seasons serviced apartments, Class A office space, luxury condominiums and the world’s highest observatory.Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who announced the project, is a major shareholder in Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts as well as being a partner in Jeddah Economic Company along with prominent Jeddah businessmen Samaual Bakhsh and Abdulrahman Hassan Sharbatly and Saudi Binladin Group (SBG). SBG is also the contractor for Kingdom Tower.

Design development of the tower is under way, with construction to begin imminently. Foundation drawings are complete and the piling for the tower is currently being tendered. Kingdom Tower will cost approximately $1.2 billion to construct, while the cost of the entire Kingdom City project is anticipated to be $20 billion.

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG) is leading an interdisciplinary design team that also includes building services engineering consultants Environmental Systems Design, Inc. and structural engineering consultants Thornton Tomasetti. The developers selected the AS+GG scheme after a lengthy competition process which included some of the biggest names in architecture:  SOM, Kohn Pedersen Fox, Pickard Chilton, Pelli Clarke Pelli and Foster + Partners.

“Our vision for Kingdom Tower is one that represents the new spirit of Saudi Arabia,”  said Smith, whose experience in supertall tower design at SOM also includes Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, Nanjing Greenland Financial Center in Nanjing, China, the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago and Pearl River Tower, now in the late stages of construction in Guangzhou, China. “This tower symbolizes the Kingdom as an important global business and cultural leader, and demonstrates the strength and creative vision of its people. It represents new growth and high-performance technology fused into one powerful iconic form. ”
The building’s developers are at pains to legitimise the project with cultural significance beyond its status as an economic status symbol. “We envision Kingdom Tower as an iconic new marker of Jeddah’s historic importance as the traditional gateway to the holy city of Mecca,” said Talal Al Maiman, Executive Director, Development and Domestic Investments, a Board member of Kingdom Holding Company and a board member of JEC. “Kingdom Tower’s height is remarkable, obviously, but the building’s iconic status will not depend solely on that aspect. Its form is brilliantly sculpted, making it quite simply one of the most beautiful buildings in the world of any height.”.

AS+GG’s design is described as highly technological and distinctly organic. “With its slender, subtly asymmetrical massing, the tower evokes a bundle of leaves shooting up from the ground—a burst of new life that heralds more growth all around it,” Smith said.
The sleek, streamlined form of the tower was inspired by the folded fronds of young desert plant growth, Gordon Gill added. “The way the fronds sprout upward from the ground as a single form, then start separating from each other at the top, is an analogy of new growth fused with technology,” he said.

AS+GG also designed the master plan for the 23-hectare Kingdom Tower Waterfront District, which surrounds the tower and which will include residential and commercial buildings, a shopping mall, high-quality outdoor spaces and other amenities.