Jeddah Tower: How to Finish the World's Tallest Building

this is the Burj Khalifa the tallest building on earth the world's tallest skyscraper the bird doesn't just break the world's tallest building record it completely shatters it it has 160 floors and is twice as high as the Empire State Building Taipei 101 could stand beside it with the Eiffel Tower perched on top and still only just matched the height of this one Rising 828 meters into the sky nothing else has ever really come close to topping it but that was all supposed to change inter Jetta Tower at a staggering 1000 meters Saudi Arabia's 1.2 billion dollar Mega Tool skyscraper was due to become the first ever kilometer High building in 2020. a tower that would finally overtake the Burj Khalifa and help position Jeddah as a global City on palm of Dubai then things took a turn [Music] today the building stands unfinished and abandoned 300 meters in the air and after years of political crackdowns under Global pandemic it remains unclear if Jeddah Tower can ever rise to its full height even if construction Works do start up again it'll take a massive feat of engineering to complete there are no building codes that prepare you for it over a kilometer tall this building had never been done with over a billion dollars and to a large extent the country's reputation riding on this tower all eyes are on Jeddah to see if it can ever complete the world's tallest building [Music] now like any Skyscraper the taller is the more attention it tends to get Jeddah Tower soon to be the tallest building in the world Saudi Arabia is making a major push to diversify their economy back in 2011 billionaire investor al-walid bintalal has set his sights on creating a centerpiece for Jeddah economic City [Music] his bold plan for a skyscraper in you guessed it Jeddah would feature 167 stories of homes offices and hotels at a kilometer tall it would rise well above the 600 meter threshold for classification in the Mega Tool skyscraper category and would essentially try to make Jeddah the Dubai of Saudi Arabia it's important to draw a distinction between this and the other huge projects that Saudi Arabia has recently announced particularly around neome they're led by its public investment fund which is a state-driven sovereign wealth fund seeking to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil is a private development albeit one that started out with plenty of backing from many in the states now to build something a kilometer tall you need an architect with a strong resume enter Adrian Smith if his name sounds familiar to you it's because he's the guy who designed the Burj Khalifa [Music] one of the biggest challenges with creating skyscrapers this high is the extreme lateral wind loads they face the taller a building is the greater its tendency to want to sway towards its top and that's something Engineers must address to ensure safety and comfort to reduce movement some super tools like Taipei 101 or 432 Park Avenue used massive weighted devices called tuned Mass dampers near their Summits that counteract swaying motion but these can take up a lot of valuable floor space for Jetta Tower Smith took another route one that lies in the most fundamental part of the building design itself like the Burj Khalifa the Jetta Tower plans to use a buttressed core to reach its megatoll height most skyscrapers that have four external walls this approach sees a hexagonal core reinforced with three y-shaped walls and that really does work we use software from today's video sponsor Sim scale to model how wind forces could flow around the Jetta Tower's enormous form it's like the analogous to the three-legged stool John Setra wasn't involved in Jeddah Tower but he certainly knows a thing or two about the design of extremely tall buildings it's very very efficient system the triangle Works in ways to deflect the forces from two sides it doesn't necessarily have the same effect as let's say a square where you know there's a broad side on a square or a rectangle and that those forces are then deflected to the other three sides the triangle actually acts as an automatic deflector the Jetta Tower would also dramatically taper towards its peak further reinforcing its resistance to strong winds and making it more aerodynamic than a four walled straight up profile that really matters because winds get stronger the taller you go and on this site and with a building of this height there aren't any other buildings or structures around to break up the airflow [Music] on the 157th floor would be the tower's crowning feature a jaw-dropping open-air observation deck that would easily become the highest viewing platform in the world with that design finalized building works first began back in 2013. now as we all know one of the first steps to construction is also the most important foundations and to support something this tool Engineers needed to use a lot of concrete [Music] and 70 piles were drilled 105 meters into the ground then a giant 5 meter thick concrete slab was placed on top that would become the base Distributing the weight of all 1000 meters of skyscraper set to rise above it next the core was constructed allowing the tower to steadily rise around it concrete was poured using a jump form system that's a type of climbing formwork that rises with the core structure allowing Builders to work safely and with constructable efficiency in sight medigillarian worked on some of the operational and Technical Systems within the building as far as the building configuration itself what we did we the challenge that we overcome we thought about it as being 20 to a 40-story buildings is stacked on top of one another so we broke it down into smaller pieces to be able to uh to manage it in 2015 two years after construction began the project secured 1.2 billion dollars in funding from a Saudi bank and real estate venture by 2017 Jetta Tower had risen 63 stories above the deserts around a third of its final height despite some bumps in the roads and minor delays it looked as if the world would soon be getting its next tallest building remarkable times in Saudi Arabia 11 princes are four sitting ministers and dozens of former ministers have been arrested among those arrested is the billionaire al-walid bintalal who is one of Saudi Arabia's most known business tycoon things took a turn were Muhammad bin Salman became Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia he began an anti-corruption Purge two people caught up in the events included Jeddah Towers key backers businessman Prince our leads and back here Bin Laden chairman of the towers Construction Company Bin Laden Group that will cause work on Jetta Tower to briefly stall the projects backers were eventually released and work briefly restarted but then there were labor issues with the contractor that further complicated matters stalling it again just as construction was about to restart in 2020 the pandemic hits and works halted it appears that ever since then the tower has sat empty and incomplete yet take a look at the official websites and the home page still says it's happening Jeddah Tower was gonna be a challenge for engineers on a good day throw in these considerable political and logistical issues and it's perhaps Little Wonder that things have seemingly grown to a halt [Music] to look like but even if everything restarted is it actually even impossible to build this tool well the truth is we'll never know unless it's actually achieved in physical steel and concrete what we can say is that Engineers were pretty certain they could do it and built the court almost the same height as New York's Chrysler Building before things got stopped they worked from the established principles paved out by other tool buildings and most notably the Burj Khalifa they modeled tested and simulated their designs in a wind tunnel and brought them to life in Virtual software before even putting a spade in the grounds or attempting to pour concrete Above the Clouds the building's aerodynamic performance and ability to manage lateral wind loads was put to the test in a wind tunnel and then modeled in software similar to that produced by today's video sponsor simscale it allows Engineers to test how different profiles and Designs will perform under a range of conditions portal buildings have to manage wind loads and as we said it gets harder the higher you go when strong winds move around structures areas of lower speed air also known as separation vortices emerge on their opposite side creating suction forces that pull at the buildings putting them at risk of swaying back and forth tapering a building as it rises helps to break up the uniformity that causes this we ran a model of Jenna Tower through simscale software to show you just how effectively this works we also create a simulation showing how wind forces could influence the surrounding area of street level both with and without the skyscraper you can see the completed Tower would be likely to produce stronger gusts on the ground near the base so designers will need to work to minimize that and protect pedestrians simscale is a powerful cloud-based engineering and simulation platform that enables everyone to create High Fidelity simulation models for building physics Urban Design and sustainability you can model everything from wind conditions to Thermal performance indoor air quality and thermal Comfort by running these virtual tests early in the design process teams can solve problems before construction starts saving time and money and for Jetta Tower time is money the longer construction is stalled to take this concrete core in the deserts and turn it into the full height occupied building will mean running tests to understand the strength and rigidity of the existing structure before recommencing construction on top of it the building's structural lifespan calculations are thrown off by part of it being six years older than the rest once the remainder of the structure goes up an advanced cladding system needs to follow close behind mechanical systems that come withstand extreme conditions 1 000 meters in the sky then need to be designed and installed and it'll lead one of the tallest elevators ever built now historically skyscrapers this tool have required people to change elevators on the way up that's because after a certain point around 500 meters the weight of the steel ropes used to lift them becomes too much but Innovations like Ultra oat by Coney that we mentioned in a recent video replaced those steel ropes with a carbon fiber material that's seven times lighter and more durable it means an elevator can travel up to a kilometer into the sky and the b1m understands that koni's system is specified to be installed at the Jetta Tower should the building proceed as you might be gathering the whole extreme height thing really does make this project tricky despite that some designers are turning it to their benefit at those upper elevations you have actually higher intensity of silver for example the top of the building has a Spire which is the actual Silo we had to build an environment where we could control the temperature so the concrete is not expanding and Contracting and in turn right we utilize the temperature variation to create a stack effect inside The Silo to be able to ventilate it properly so it doesn't really use any energy it's self-ventilated but very controlled but the Jetta Tower is located in the desert brings more than just intense heat to the table and creates a huge maintenance requirements the sandstorms are it's abrasive so you can imagine that that's very fine sand swirling around the building and you want to uh you want to have a door very durable coatings on the building that will not literally be uh you know sanded away then that also then affects the cleanliness of the building in in the Middle East they use many systems that don't require a human being to be on the scaffolding that and it's automatic now building something as bold as the world's tallest building will bring you headlines and some jealousy you might recall plans for Dubai Creek Tower a scheme announced by the UAE to bring the title of world's tallest structure back to the country that started work and then paused again after Jeddah tower hit the buffers its foundations remain sitting there kind of like a quiet warning Jeddah should it ever start up again despite the long pause meddy thinks things could start to move soon there is a lot of talk right now and planning to restart they have built the the utilities and roadways of the site obviously it's been uh stopped for a while and there are things that need to be rethought for the process so now I think we're in much better position while it may still be possible to turn this super tool stump into the world's tallest building right now the challenges of funding politics and Extreme Engineering all appear equally daunting collectively putting a heavy block on progress if the world's first kilometer High skyscraper ever rises from these Sands it'll be both record-breaking and remarkable in many ways this video was made possible by simscale you can learn more about that at the link below there's also the charts to dive deeper on Jeddah Tower and the other topics on our Channel over on the world's best construction podcasts available right now wherever you get your podcasts and as always if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction make sure you subscribed to the b1m

Channel: The B1M

Views: 2,285,292

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, tower, megatall, skyscraper, jeddah tower, saudi arabia, jeddah, simscale, wind, burj khalifa, Jeddah Economic City, Adrian Smith, foundation, Mohammad bin Salman, supertall, New York, separation vortices, KONE, Middle East, Dubai Creek Tower, kilometre tall, dubai, uae, neom, the line

Id: L6E-VjbOVEs

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023