This is what the top of the Kingdom Tower will look like...
The building of the Kingdom Tower was launched three
years ago in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. It should be finished in 2020, becoming the
tallest tower in the world, with its final height exceeding one kilometre!
People and architects have always wanted to build
taller than before, with the aim of succeeding in new and more difficult
technical challenges.
Adrian Smith, the Kingdom Tower’s architect, included
a lot of new technical challenges to his project. For example, he designed a
triangular tower in order to optimize its resistance against strong winds. The
elevator company KONE is rising to the challenge
of taking people to the top of the building in a very short time. They created
an elevator which can reach a 10 m/s speed, allowing people to reach the top of the tower in only 72 seconds.
The tower will cost 1.2 billion dollars, which makes a
lot of people wonder: why build a tower like this in the desert? The prince Al-Walid, who finances the tower, answered that it is
to show that Saudi Arabia invests its money for the country, in spite of the
crises. It’s a political message to show the wealth of Saudi Arabia. Indeed, a tower like the Kingdom Tower is good for
notoriety and attracting economic investment. For example, there is now a big
and very attractive city around the Burj Khalifa.
However,
this record will be short-lived because Saudi oil is going, sooner or later, to
run out… And China has announced the construction of the Bionic Tower for 2022 which
will be 200 meters taller than the Kingdom Tower. Adrian Smith says that each
skyscraper tells us a lot about the environment, the era, a country’s ambitions…
Science et Vie Junior, 318, mars 2016
Joachim de Kermadec wants to be an architect.
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