Planned tower would be world’s tallest

CHICAGO – A tower designed by Chicago architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill and to be built in Saudi Arabia will be the world’s tallest building if completed, according to plans unveiled Tuesday.

Kingdom Tower will be built in Jeddah, a port city on the Red Sea, according to Adrian Smith & Gordon Gill Architecture. The building will be more than 3,280 feet tall and at least 563 feet taller than the world’s current tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.

Smith was with the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill when he designed the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa, which opened in January 2010.

Construction of Kingdom Tower will start “imminently” and is expected to last about five years, according to Smith and Gill’s firm. The building will house a luxury hotel, apartments, condos, office space and the world’s highest observatory and is expected to cost $1.2 billion to construct. The tower is part of Kingdom City, a development project in Jeddah expected to cost $20 billion.

The building’s exact height has not been revealed. Some previous reports had said the building was expected to be one mile high, but those reports were quickly discredited by Smith and Gill’s firm.

The plans were announced Tuesday by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah and chairman of Kingdom Holding Co.