If you're afraid of heights and buildings that cost an exorbitant amount of money, read no further. Saudi Arabia is planning on building the 3,280-foot (1 km) Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, which will eclipse the world's current tallest building, Dubai's 2,716-foot Burj Khalifa.
The Kingdom Tower, according to CNN, will cost close to $1.23 billion, and have 200 floors that overlook the Red Sea. Almost six million square feet of concrete and 80,000 tons of steel will be needed for the building to take shape.
It will be difficult to build a structure that tall on the coast, so the foundations will be 200 feet deep and need to withstand saltwater. Wind must also be taken into consideration, which is why the building's shape will change every few floors (the wind is more severe when a building is a solid block).
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As extreme as building something like the Kingdom Tower sounds, it's not completely out of this world. "At this point in time we can build a tower that is one kilometer, maybe two kilometers," Sang Dae Kim, the director of the Council on Tall Buildings, told Construction Weekly. "Any higher than that and we will have to do a lot of homework." --Catherine Garcia
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