Riyadh: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) plans to construct the tallest building in the world within the $500 Billion NEOM project.
The brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, plans to build two skyscrapers, each about 500 meters high (1,640 feet), extending horizontally for dozens of miles.
The skyscrapers will feature a mix of residential, retail and office space stretching linearly from the Red Sea coast into the desert.
According to Bloomberg, the NEOM project staff indicated that the designers were directed to work on a prototype half a mile long.
The new plan represents a shift from the concept announced in 2021, to build a series of buildings linked to each other through a network of high-speed trains, into a long connected structure.
If implemented according to this scheme, each building would be taller than the current tallest buildings in the world, most of which would be factories or shopping centers rather than residential communities.
The world’s current tallest man-made structure is the 828-metre-tall (2,717 ft) Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in 20221, that building the “The Line” project – which will be the first implementation of the car-free linear city concept and will form the backbone of NEOM – could cost up to $200 billion, although that It was before the plan was changed to include giant horizontal buildings.
NEOM is a Saudi project for a city planned to be built across the border, launched by Prince Muhammad bin Salman Al Saud, the Saudi Crown Prince on Tuesday, 4 Safar 1439 AH corresponding to October 24, 2017.
The project aims, within the framework of the ambitious aspirations of Vision 2030, to transform the Kingdom into a leading global model in various aspects of life, by focusing on attracting value chains in industries and technology within the project. The first phase of NEOM will be completed by 2025.
