dailyloe.com – Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah Tower is on course to be the world’s first kilometre-tall building, according to architect Gordon Gill. In an interview with Dezeen, Gill said a skyscraper double that height is already realistic. The megatall skyscraper is currently rising just outside the port city of Jeddah.
Gill co-founded Chicago-based studio Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture with Adrian Smith and Robert Forest. The firm is a skyscraper specialist and the designer behind Jeddah Tower. The building is one of the most hotly anticipated projects of the century.
Jeddah Tower is set to soon surpass the 830-metre-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai as the world’s tallest building. The Burj Khalifa was designed by Gill’s partner Smith while at SOM. Jeddah Tower reached its 100th floor this week.
Construction has not always been smooth sailing. The building broke ground in 2013, but progress stopped and restarted multiple times for myriad reasons. These included financial issues, the Covid-19 pandemic, and technical challenges.
One of the biggest blows came when the contractor, Binladin Group, was taken off the project. This was due to the company owner being arrested as part of 2017 corruption purges in Saudi Arabia. The purges also saw the project’s developer, Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, detained.
After construction officially restarted in early 2025, Gill says Jeddah Tower is now on track to complete in 2028. Its lofty ambition remains intact. That puts it in stark contrast to the current prospects of other high-profile Saudi projects, such as Neom.
What makes Jeddah Tower different is that its ambition of rising one kilometre into the sky is actually realistic, according to Gill. “It’s not a speculative endeavour,” Gill told Dezeen. “Of all the projects in Saudi Arabia, this was the one that was capable of meeting its deadline.”
“What sets [Jeddah Tower] apart is its clarity and reality of being able to be delivered under a known set of circumstances,” Gill said. These circumstances include constructability, economy and time. “It’s not a speculative endeavour; it’s a reality, and it has been a reality for some time,” he continued.
“Everything else was starting from paper, whereas this had already been established as a known entity,” Gill said. “It just needed the impetus to finish it.” There are lessons here for architects, he suggests. “One of the things that we have to be careful of in all of this is the common sense around what we’re doing.”
“As architects, we turn down projects all the time if we think they are unrealistic,” Gill added. When it comes to skyscrapers, Gill believes that the Jeddah Tower project demonstrates realistic ambition. The building is set to become the world’s tallest upon completion.
