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Nanjing Zifeng Tower Designer Takes on World’s Tallest Building

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The world’s latest tallest building is back on track in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, after numerous delays to the project that shares its designer with he of Nanjing’s very own tallest building, the Zifeng Tower.

The Jeddah Tower was designed by Chicago, USA-based, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, while partner Adrian Smith has among his portfolio of work, the 450-metre tall Zifeng Tower here in Nanjing, also home to the InterContinental Hotel. The Jeddah Tower, on the other hand, will dwarf Nanjing’s tallest building by more than a factor of two; its design plans call for the structure to be topped out at a height of 1,000 metres. The new world record would outsrip the current holder, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, by almost 200 metres.

Speaking with the Times of Oman, chief executive of developer Jeddah Economic Company (JEC), Mounib Hammoud, said, ”We have faced delays. In projects of this magnitude you always have delays – I hope we’ll recover the delays we’ve had”.

Such delays have been put down to financial difficulties in the local construction sector over the last 2 years. Construction met a roadblock while working on the tower’s 63 floor, but has now resumed.

When complete, the tower will be 167 floors high and served by 60 lifts. A 700 square-metre outdoor observation deck shall protrude from the tower at 660 metres above the ground, again another world record.

Priced at US$1.5 billion, the tower comes complete with unprecedented design, technical and construction challenges.

Jeddah’s changing temperatures and winds mean the concrete mix has to be approved by another Chicago-based firm on a monthly basis, while the tower must also be checked to be 100 percent vertical almost every week.

Hisham Jomah, chief development officer of the project, has said, “Between theory and application, what has been designed and what is actually on site – that is quite another world”.

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