SoVibrant Opinion8: burj khalifa

15 October 2012

The Kingdom Tower v The Mile High Tower

Further to my blog on the 10^th January 2012 about Kingdom Tower, I was interested to hear about how the project was progressing.

The first skyscraper to break through the kilometre mark appears to have secured all its funding and work has already started on site . Bauer Group have just confirmed that they will once again be providing the foundations for the world’s tallest building, having previously worked on the foundations for the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

The 270 bored piles of 1.5 and 1.8 metres in diameter will be drilled to depths of 110 metres in order to stabilise this immense structure, using two state of the art drilling rigs owned by the Bauer Group . These works are scheduled to begin in December and should take about 10 months, with a contract value of EUR 25 million, the first big bill for Kingdom Real Estate Development Co., who are said to have a total of 1.2 billion American dollars to spend on the building.

The architects of Kingdom Tower, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill, also have a history of working on the Burj Khalifa, which was designed by Adrian Smith while at Skidmore, Owings & Merril, demonstrating that the developer is utilising the expertise of those with "super tall" experience.

The Kingdom Tower was originally called the Mile High Tower as it was planned to reach heights of 1,600 metres (1 mile), nearly twice the height of the Burj Khalifa . Eventually the project team came to the conclusion that the kilometre mark was a more realistic target . However, one man who thought a Mile High Tower was achievable was Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed The Illinois Tower back in 1956, a concept tower eons ahead of its time and remarkably similar to the current design of The Kingdom Tower . Had it been built, it would have been the tallest building in the world by far, being more than four times the height of the then tallest building in the world, the Empire State Building.

Attached below is a series of images of the Kingdom Tower from the architect’s website and a short animation by visualhouse of the proposed development, followed by images of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tower conceived over 56 years ago.

The Kingdom Tower

The Illinois - Mile High Tower

Animation by visualhouse from youtube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=t90zu387Rzs

1 World Trade Center V The Empire State

Following on from previous blogs about my trip to New York and the World Trade Center site, it was good to hear that One World Trade Center has become New York's tallest building.

The installation of a column on the 100th floor of the once named Freedom Tower, makes the structure 1,271ft (387m) high, overtaking the Empire State.

This date comes a day before the one-year anniversary of the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden.

Another reminder of the building's significance to all New Yorkers, along with the other symbolic architectural references of the building’s final height and the square water features below. A memorial to all the people that died, in the same location as the original 2 buildings.

The finished building will be 1,776ft high making it temporarily the second tallest building in the world, after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai at 2,723ft (830m)

As mentioned before the building doesn't win any awards for me on an architectural footing, as the design has been compromised for security and simplicity.

Some of the other buildings proposed for the site have tried harder to progress the skyscraper as a building type with ideas and forms that will be new to the city.

One World Trade Center is basically a chamfered block, however it does win on height and symbolic references, which it has the original concept work by Daniel Libeskind to thank.