Bin Laden Group to build world’s tallest tower

Saudi Arabian officials confirmed this week that a deal has been struck with the Saudi Binladen Group to build the world's tallest tower in Jeddah.

At a cost of about $1.2 billion, the so called Kingdom Tower, will be more than 3,000 feet high and will overlook the Red Sea. The tower is expected to be completed in 2016.

The tower will be the centerpiece in the development of Kingdom City, an urban project that will span 5.3 million square meters in northern Jeddah. The Kingdom Tower will be home to a Four Seasons Hotel, apartments, office space, luxury condiminiums and the world's highest observation deck.

“We intend Kingdom Tower to become both an economic engine and a proud symbol of the Kingdom’s economic and cultural stature in the world community,” Talal Al-Maiman, a board member for the companies heading up the project, told Arab News.

The Kingdom Tower will drawf what is now the world's tallest building — the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which stands at mere 2,700 feet.

Chicago architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill will design the tower, which will resemble a glass needle that sits atop three legs.

"We looked to a powerful symbol of life springing from the ground and forming itself as a vertical spire toward the heavens," Gill told the Chicago Tribune. "We used symbols such as new plant growth coming out of the sand and spoke to that as a kind of rejuvenation of intellectual capital, business and culture. I think that those are some of the things that we hope this building will come to represent."

The Bin Laden Group is the largest construction firm in Saudi Arabia and is owned by the bin Laden family. The founder of the company, Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden Sayyid is Osama bin Laden's father. The family, however, distanced itself from Osama bin Laden long before he became globally infamous on Sept. 11, 2001.

The race to build the world's tallest building has a long history. The United States held the record for decades with buildings in Chicago and New York until Malaysia built the twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. The Petronas Towers were then taken over by the Burj Khalifia.

Although they bring a tremendous amount of prestige and can have transformative effects on property values around them, the world's tallest buildings are rarely commercial sucesses, at least at the outset. The Burj Khalifa is still struggling to find tenants. The Empire State Building in New York was inititally known as the "Empty State Building."