Short Stuff: Jeddah Tower

Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff Josh Chuck, Jerry Dave and Spirit short Stuff.

That's right, that's my cue. This is about the Jetta Tower j E. D. D Ah thanks to Architectural Digest and CNN and how stuff works for this stuff.

But this is the story.

Of if it's finished eventually will be at least for a while, the tallest building in the world.

Yeah, it's gonna make the Bird Khalifa look like poop.

So let's go back to two thousand and eight.

There's a billionaire investor named Prince Alowed Ben Tallal of Saudi Arabia, and I think his goal.

Was to make the Bird Khalifa look like poop. He was like, I want to make one taller.

I want to build a city and around it called the Jetta Economic City. Terrible name, and basically like they wanted to compete with Dubai, but in Saudi Arabia, right.

Because Dubai is in the UAE. And he wanted to build the first skyscraper to reach over thirty two hundred and eighty feet or higher. And for those of us in the United States and for our friends in Liberia, that is a kilometer. So this would be the first kilometer high building, which is mind bogglingly tall, and he's doing it baby in two thousand. Well, I guess they made it up to twenty eighteen.

Before oh no, year. I was thinking feet.

Right, No, no, the year. Yeah, that was a little confusing. I'm sorry about that. That's right, especially when you know the construction history of the tower. But no, they made it up to twenty eighteen the year. See, I guess I should have said before they had to halt construction thanks to a bunch of different stuff.

That's right, you know, it's the way he said it when you said they went all the way up to twenty eighteen.

Brick by brick, all the way to twenty eighteen, big year.

So yeah, construction pause in twenty eighteen. We'll talk about why here in a minute. And also, COVID had a big dent in it. The bird Khalifa is the current tallest building, at twenty seven seventeen feet.

Tall the year oh no.

If you're wondering about the eventual kilometer high building, the Jetta Tower, if you remember our beloved twin towers here in the United States, it'll be about twice the size of those which is astonishing to think about.

Also, I mean, for a little closer to home, if you don't live in New York, the average two story houses about twenty to twenty five feet.

Right for comparison, how many big macs.

I looked and I was like, I'm not doing this.

Yeah, that's over.

It was designed both Birge Khalifa and the Jetta Tower by an American architect named Adrian Smith.

Did not know that, Yeah, and they're both.

You know, it's not a copycat of the Bird Khalifa, but it's definitely some in structure because what Adrian Smith reckoned and figured out was that making a building that tall as a triangle, as a y shape instead of a square, instead of a box or a rectangle is a lot safer for like, you know, he did wind tunnel testing and stuff like that. It's like, this thing is gonna meet the wind in a safer way.

Yeah, it gets awfully windy the higher up you go. And if you want to, if you're like wind cheer in buildings, that sounds interesting. I could not recommend more. A nineteen ninety five New Yorker article called the fifty nine Story Crisis about when the city Bank. I've talked about it before. I don't know when, but when the City Bank building in the seventies was built and occupied and the engineer architect figured out like, oh god, like basically I forgot.

To carry the one get everyone out of there.

They had to figure out how to shore it up for a hurricane hit. Oh that was like on its way. Basically. It's a really really great article.

I guess at the time they would have brought in Bruce Willis to solve that problem.

That's right.

Yeah, man, I got to read that. That sounds great.

It is so greatly suspenseful. It's just a wonderful article, one of the best ever.

Awesome. So the Birds Khalifa.

One of the differences is that one tapers in different stages at different sections.

But the Jetta tower is sort of one big triangle.

It's going to be one continuously tapering tower and literally sort of piercing the clouds at one point.

Yeah. I saw that Adrian Smith was inspired by how palm leaves stick up from the top of a tree before they unfurl cool and bend over. And I looked at a picture. I'm like, yep, that looks like the Jetta tower.

Yeah, awesome.

So you want to take a little break and come back and talk about I don't know, the Jetta Tower some more.

Yeah, let's do it.

So we're gonna just give you a few nuts and bolts appropriately about the Jetta Tower. The big showstopper there will be the observation tower, open air observation tower, which is terrifying. It'll be a two eighty seven feet They were gonna have a helipad on it, or it was supposedly supposed to be a helipad, I think, and architects were like, he can't out here with you can't land a helicopter. It's on something that high out here. That's not a good idea.

So like, we'll make it an observation deck. We'll just tell everybody to ignore the giant h in the circle on the deck.

Yeah, exactly, stand in the center of that.

So yeah, I mean, I don't like heights, but I would check that out if I ever found myself in Jeta.

Yeah. Maybe.

By the way, Jeda is actually already a town there on the Red Sea. There was a guy who was interviewed in this house stuff works article maybe Architectural Digest, where he said like, this is not a place where you would normally live, which I think is kind of mean to people who live in Jedda, But I get his point. It's not like Jeda economic city. But it's claimed to fame, as far as I know, is that it is the tomb. It holds the tomb of Eve,

Wow, all right, my mind is kind of blown.

Yeah, it blew mine too, and I just could not share it.

All right, this might blow your mind too.

The Jeda Tower, at least according to its original plans, who knows what's going to end up happening. We'll have about eighty t eighty thousand tons of steel, fifty nine ultra high speed elevators, eight escalators, seven double decker elevators. I think if you're going up to that observatory in terrace, you're going to go at about thirty two feet per second, which is pretty fast. And it's the mixed use space. It's gonna the bottom third is going to be office space.

Yeah. I found some pictures, some renderings of it, and I'm like, meh, I mean, you could find the exact same thing in Miami or Rio or it just looks like whatever. It's Yeah, you know, I mean, the tower itself is going to be amazing, but yeah, the it's just, you know, when you have that much space and that much wealth, there's only so much you can do.

Yeah, agreed.

The original name was a Kingdom Tower, and they broke ground in April of twenty thirteen. It took more than a year just to lay the foundation, and they have these concrete pilings ten feet in diameter, longer than a football field, that go down very very very deep into

Yeah, that's amazing. That is some foresight. You were telling me about that, and you hadn't got to the part where they had the sensors, And I was like, please tell me that they are not just building on top of an unsafe structure or they're going to have to tear the whole thing down and start over. But nope, you really came through with the great positive twist at the end.

Yeah.

Well, they eventually restarted after COVID. I think in twenty twenty three. Of September twenty twenty three is when they finally restarted. They said in twenty twenty three it would be another four or five years, But in twenty twenty five, just over a year ago, sixty of the one hundred and sixty seven floors have been built, and this year in January they passed just recently the eighty floor mark.

Yeah, so they're almost halfway there. There was they're thinking that they might be done in the next couple of years.

Yeah. I don't know, but I mean I did. The YouTube video also said that they are going at like breakneck pace.

Now, yeah, that's you don't really want to do that when you're building the world's tallest building.

But no, I agree.

Also a little fact, if you're like Prince Muhammed ben Solomon, he sounds kind of familiar. Yeah. When he did that anti corruption purgo's the same time that he ordered Jamal Kashogi, the coltunist and dissident murdered.

That's right, Yet he was still welcomed into our White House.

Wow, so you got anything else.

I have nothing else. We'll see what happens with the Jetta Tower. I mean, it looks like it'll be finished, you know. I don't know about four or five years from twenty twenty three, but we'll see.

Yeah. And sorry to all the people who saw this short stuff title Jetta Tower and were like they better not bring the White House into this short stuff is out.

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