How Saudi Arabia Is Building the World's Tallest 1000m Skyscraper (Full Process)
Megabuild Chronicles
286 views
Amara and Amira, our digital documentary hosts, take you inside the race to build the world's first kilometer-tall tower.
Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia is set to become the world's tallest skyscraper — a 1000m engineering marvel rising from the Red Sea coast. Stack three Eiffel Towers on top of each other, and you still fall short.
Over 1,000 meters tall, 167 floors, with a $1.2B budget that has since grown to an estimated $26B. In 2008, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal dreamed of the first mile-high tower in history. Soil tests forced engineers to shrink that dream to one kilometer — still enough to make it the tallest building on Earth. Architect Adrian Smith, who designed the Burj Khalifa, took on the challenge of beating his own record.
Engineers drilled 270 piles up to 110 meters deep and electrified the foundations to stop saltwater corrosion. They battled 120 mph winds at the top with a three-winged design that breaks wind vortices before they can sync with the tower's sway. They pumped concrete over 1,000 meters high — a world record pressure no ordinary pipe could survive.
Then in 2017, everything stopped. Frozen for seven years. In 2024, the cranes came back to life — climbing with the building itself, floor after floor, using self-climbing formwork and the fastest double-deck elevators ever built, hanging from carbon fiber instead of steel.
Today, the tower's final height remains a closely guarded secret — hidden the same way the Chrysler Building once hid its spire to steal a world record in 1930.
🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into the engineering feats behind the infrastructure we see every day.
In this video:
0:00 Hook
0:58 The Story — The Bet
2:16 The Foundations
4:02 The Wind
5:54 The Core
6:37 The Frozen Site
7:28 The Restart & The Climbing Cranes
9:03 The Heat
9:47 The Record Pumping
10:56 The Workers
11:32 The Elevators
12:18 The Secret Height
13:26 The Verdict
14:20 Tomorrow
⚠️ This video is an educational breakdown of real public infrastructure and engineering projects, built entirely from publicly available information. Every visual, animation, and scene shown is synthetic — generated with AI — and does not depict actual footage of the construction site, workers, or equipment. This content is provided strictly for informational and educational purposes.
#JeddahTower #SaudiArabia #Engineering
How Saudi Arabia Is Building the World's Tallest 1000m Skyscraper (Full Process)
Megabuild Chronicles
286 views
Amara and Amira, our digital documentary hosts, take you inside the race to build the world's first kilometer-tall tower.
Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia is set to become the world's tallest skyscraper — a 1000m engineering marvel rising from the Red Sea coast. Stack three Eiffel Towers on top of each other, and you still fall short.
Over 1,000 meters tall, 167 floors, with a $1.2B budget that has since grown to an estimated $26B. In 2008, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal dreamed of the first mile-high tower in history. Soil tests forced engineers to shrink that dream to one kilometer — still enough to make it the tallest building on Earth. Architect Adrian Smith, who designed the Burj Khalifa, took on the challenge of beating his own record.
Engineers drilled 270 piles up to 110 meters deep and electrified the foundations to stop saltwater corrosion. They battled 120 mph winds at the top with a three-winged design that breaks wind vortices before they can sync with the tower's sway. They pumped concrete over 1,000 meters high — a world record pressure no ordinary pipe could survive.
Then in 2017, everything stopped. Frozen for seven years. In 2024, the cranes came back to life — climbing with the building itself, floor after floor, using self-climbing formwork and the fastest double-deck elevators ever built, hanging from carbon fiber instead of steel.
Today, the tower's final height remains a closely guarded secret — hidden the same way the Chrysler Building once hid its spire to steal a world record in 1930.
🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into the engineering feats behind the infrastructure we see every day.
In this video:
0:00 Hook
0:58 The Story — The Bet
2:16 The Foundations
4:02 The Wind
5:54 The Core
6:37 The Frozen Site
7:28 The Restart & The Climbing Cranes
9:03 The Heat
9:47 The Record Pumping
10:56 The Workers
11:32 The Elevators
12:18 The Secret Height
13:26 The Verdict
14:20 Tomorrow
⚠️ This video is an educational breakdown of real public infrastructure and engineering projects, built entirely from publicly available information. Every visual, animation, and scene shown is synthetic — generated with AI — and does not depict actual footage of the construction site, workers, or equipment. This content is provided strictly for informational and educational purposes.
#JeddahTower #SaudiArabia #Engineering