beatle11 Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 http://dvice.com/archives/2011/04/kingdom-tower-w.php As cool as this is, how about cutting the effing price of oil instead of spending the money on this. How high does a tower need to reach before it's considered too high? If you think relaxing up on top of the Burj Khalifa's At.mosphere won't give you vertigo, try Saudi Arabia's Kingdom Tower — a structure that will extend one mile upwards — almost twice the height of Dubai's tallest. Those Middle Eastern princes just can't get enough of those insanely tall skyscrapers. Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, head of Kingdom Holding Company recently gave his approval for construction of what will be billed as the world's tallest man-made structure — the Kingdom Tower. The Kingdom Tower will be built in Saudi Arabia's city of Jeddah. The tower will stretch one mile up into heavens and include 12 million cubic feet of space, several stories of office space, several stories for a hotel and four tiers of residential space, with the upper most tier reserved for "alternative energy generation" solutions (perhaps including a pendulum to keep the entire tower from collapsing). The Kingdom Tower project is so large that it'll cost $30 billion to construct. To get to the top from the ground floor, an elevator ride would take an estimated 12 minutes to ascend. That's quite a journey for a view that is sure to be mostly sand and clouds. As if it wasn't already hard enough to keep the glass on the Burj Khalifa squeaky clean, think how much more difficult it'll be to clean the dirt off windows twice as high up. No matter how you look at it, the Kingdom Tower reeks of excess, but who cares when you're rolling in money? CORRECTION: This post originally stated that the Kingdom Tower was being designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. While the design firm did bid on designing the Kingdom Tower, it has not confirmed nor denied that the firm is working on the Kingdom Tower. An official design firm has not been announced as of this writing. The pictures and renderings included in this story are not those of Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. GulfNews, via Inhabitat and Architizer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeemerBoy Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 ^ Who the hell designed that graphic? Ever heard of ascending order? As for another ridiculously tall tower.....I guess modern slavery will continue to be at a premium. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jds03 Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 It looks to me like this is just another random ridiculous vision for Dubai which i can't see actually being built. I mostly trust this site with anything skyscraper related: http://skyscraperpage.com/ They have amazing illustrations and a great way of displaying facts about skyscrapers, i checked there immediately after reading this and couldn't find anything, even under visions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doublestufforeo Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Am I the only one who looks at the art and thinks of a ballpoint pen? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharkTums Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Where is that penis-size graphic by country? Are these guys just over compensating or what?!!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beatle11 Posted May 11, 2011 Author Share Posted May 11, 2011 ^ Post of the day!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueerRudie Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 Where is that penis-size graphic by country? Are these guys just over compensating or what?!!? It's not the SIZE of your skyscraper- but what you DO with your tower that's important. (And apparantly, there is some SEERRRRIOUS overcompensating going on there.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-RadG Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 How useless... I immediately thought of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKsJXVFcREY Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiger01 Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 ^ Literally! That is hilarious. I doubt this will be made though. It's not really about Height really is it?? Is about Flamboyance and awesomeness. Like roller coasters! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueerRudie Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 ^ Actually- don't count them out at all... In 1950, Frank Lloyd Wright propsed the Denver Mile High skyscraper project- a 5,300 foot tall tower based upon some of his earlier works involving organic archetecture and his methods of design. Although too early for it's era, the design worked- at least to a degree. It would NOT surprise me at all to think that this skyscraper could be built- or even replicated over time. The question becomes: In 100 years, how in the hell do you take the thing down??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharkTums Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 ^Not a worry as the world ends next year anyway! Here's the chart...looks like the Saudi's didn't even take part! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace Of Spades Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 The sheer amount of stereotypes confirmed by that map is amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmicha Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 As an architect myself and an avid skyscraper fan, I feel that this is the most likely of all the monstrous Middle Eastern proposals to be built. The money isn't coming from investors or anything like that but rather the royal family. What that means is that whatever they want, they get. Approval is already in place for the skyscraper and essentially all that's waiting to happen is for the design to be finished. Although insanely expensive at around $30,000,000,000 I believe this building will at the very least get started. Whether or not it actually ever is finished, that remains to be seen. But the only thing stopping it from progressing at this moment in time is the fact that the design work isn't finished yet. Everything else is in place. As for needing to take it down in 100 years, skyscrapers are designed to stand for a heck of a lot longer than that. The first modern skyscrapers are already that old and they were built by hand out of brick. Adrian Smith (the architect) is well aware of how to properly design a massive skyscraper. He is the architect of Burj Khalifa and this is essentially just the next logical step in the skyscraper wars of Asia and the Middle East. Although a completely unnecessary building that is nearly three times the square footage of any other building ever built, I will watch in amazement when it finally starts after years and years of proposals and design iterations. I mean, if they need to compensate for something they are lacking, I might as well get some enjoyment out of it and support it if only purely from a technological/engineering perspective. The design, architecturally speaking, is seriously lacking, but it will still be amazing once it is complete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeemerBoy Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Sooo, does any of that $30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 budget include an advertising campaign to actually make people wanna visit Saudi Arabia? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcjaco Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 ^ Who the hell designed that graphic? Ever heard of ascending order? As for another ridiculously tall tower.....I guess modern slavery will continue to be at a premium. Not only that, but there's two building on there that aren't even built. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmicha Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 And the Burj Khalifa isn't listed as its actual height of 828 meters. And the Kingdom Tower is drawn at 1000 meters tall rather than the 1609 that design actually is. I'm guessing that is an old graphic from way back when the very first image of the tower's current concept surfaced. Burj Khalifa wasn't finished yet so nobody knew how tall it was actually going to be, the Chicago Spire was still trucking along successfully and the Nakheel Tower showed very little signs of stopping its own progression. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hercules Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 ^Not a worry as the world ends next year anyway! Here's the chart...looks like the Saudi's didn't even take part! Correction. The world is ending next week. Not only do we not have to worry about this tower every getting built or dismantled, we don't even have to work about food shopping next weekend!!! http://www.familyradio.com/index2.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace Of Spades Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 ^Oh wow, that's just...sad. Gotta love that they're still accepting donations nine days till the end. Hope that buys them a bit more magic kool-aid before the end times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueerRudie Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Correction. The world is ending next week. Not only do we not have to worry about this tower every getting built or dismantled, we don't even have to work about food shopping next weekend!!! http://www.familyradio.com/index2.html Damn. I just hope it doesn't end while I'm changing planes at LAX... I'd sure hate to have to try to deal with the world ending WHILE changing planes... Oh wait. LAX IS the end of the world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginzo Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 The question becomes: In 100 years, how in the hell do you take the thing down??? A 767? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tntornadox Posted May 14, 2011 Share Posted May 14, 2011 I'm just glad they still called it the Sears Tower in the illustration. Who calls it Willis Tower? Who was stupid enough to change the name on a building that iconic and expect it to stick? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueerRudie Posted May 14, 2011 Share Posted May 14, 2011 A 767? Totally NOT in good taste... Especially since some of us lost people IN two 767s on 9/11. There's a place for humor- and then there's just plain bad taste. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginzo Posted May 14, 2011 Share Posted May 14, 2011 Totally NOT in good taste... Especially since some of us lost people IN two 767s on 9/11. There's a place for humor- and then there's just plain bad taste. It was obviously a rip on the Saudis since many of the hijackers were from there and much of the funding for Al-Qaeda pre-9/11 came from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QueerRudie Posted May 14, 2011 Share Posted May 14, 2011 Totally NOT in good taste... Especially since some of us lost people IN two 767s on 9/11. There's a place for humor- and then there's just plain bad taste. It was obviously a rip on the Saudis since many of the hijackers were from there and much of the funding for Al-Qaeda pre-9/11 came from there. People dying due to extremism is wrong no matter where they come from, or where it occurs. People die either way. How is that meant to be funny? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginzo Posted May 14, 2011 Share Posted May 14, 2011 ^So, it wasn't all that funny. But you're also reaching to be offended about a hypothetical situation 100 years from now. And it was frankly an absurd question to begin with. Of course there's a reasonable way to demolish a building if it can be constructed in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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