Short Stuff: Jeddah Tower

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Episode: Short Stuff: Jeddah Tower
Date: March 18, 2026
Hosts: Josh & Chuck

In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore the story of the Jeddah Tower, a hugely ambitious skyscraper project underway in Saudi Arabia. The duo breaks down the building’s history, its architectural innovations, the challenges it's faced—including financial and political upheaval—and what makes it so extraordinary in the history of human construction. The episode blends historical context, engineering challenges, fun comparisons, and a few jaw-dropping facts about both the project and its setting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Ambition of Jeddah Tower

• The story begins with 2008 plans by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to best the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and create "the first skyscraper to reach over 3,280 ft or higher"—a full kilometer (02:02).
• The tower was to be the centerpiece of "Jeddah Economic City," a planned metropolis that Chuck jokes has a "terrible name" (01:41).
• The underlying motivation: "I think his goal was to make the Burj Khalifa look like poop...I want to build one taller" (Josh, 01:37).

2. Engineering and Design Innovations

• Architect: Adrian Smith, the American architect who designed both the Burj Khalifa and Jeddah Tower (03:46).
• Structural Design: The Jeddah Tower uses a triangular (Y-shaped) core, a design that’s "a lot safer" at massive heights due to wind tunnel testing results (Josh, 03:56).
  • "Making a building that tall as a triangle...instead of a box or rectangle is a lot safer for...wind" (03:56).
• Inspirations: Adrian Smith was inspired by palm leaves: "how palm leaves stick up from the top of a tree before they unfurl, cool and bend over...I'm like, yep, that looks like the Jeddah Tower" (Chuck, 05:33).

3. Construction Timeline and Challenges

• Start and Stops:
  • Ground broke in April 2013; just laying the foundation took over a year (10:59).
  • Construction halted in 2018 due to political turmoil and later the COVID-19 pandemic (02:55, 09:02, 11:23).
• Political Impact: Major construction backer Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was arrested in a broad anti-corruption sweep led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which also entangled the Saudi Binladin Group (financial and building partners) (11:23).
  • "Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a big anti corruption purge where he arrested 11 Saudi princes, one of which was the financial backer of the Jeddah Tower" (Josh, 11:23).
• Engineering Safeguards: Foresight led to installation of underground sensors to monitor structural integrity during the long pause—a rare move in the region (12:00).
  • "Apparently they had the foresight to install these underground sensors...and they could get readings that apparently said, like, we're all good down here." (Josh, 11:59).
• Restart: Work resumed September 2023, and by January 2026, 80 of the 167 planned floors are complete (12:33).

4. Mind-Boggling Comparisons and Fun Facts

• Size: Would be about twice as tall as the original World Trade Center’s Twin Towers (03:21).
• Elevators: Planned to have 59 ultra high-speed elevators and 7 double-decker elevators, zipping people up at 32 ft per second (09:55, 10:01).
• Observation Deck: Originally planned as a helipad, but architects rejected that as "not a good idea" due to wind and height (08:15).
  • "It'll be at 2,187ft...They were gonna have a helipad on it...can't land a helicopter on something that high" (Josh, 08:15).

5. Local Context and Legends

• Jeddah’s Unlikely Fame: The city is said to be the burial place of Eve ("Eve of Garden of Eden fame") and Jeddah’s name may be derived from "jara," meaning grandmother (09:02, 09:28).
  • "It's claim to fame...is that it holds the tomb of Eve...Jeddah is...a derivation of jara, which means grandmother" (Chuck, 09:28).

6. Ongoing Status and Cautionary Commentary

• The project is now being pursued at "breakneck pace," which the hosts note is concerning for safety in such a complex build (Josh, 13:06).
  • "You don't really want to do that when you're building the world's tallest building, but who knows?" (Chuck, 13:12).
• "We’ll see what happens with the Jeddah Tower...but we'll see." (Josh, 13:40).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ambitions to outdo Dubai:
  "Yeah, it's going to make the Burj Khalifa look like poop."
  —Chuck (01:31)

• Engineering insight:
  "Making a building that tall as a triangle...instead of a box or rectangle is a lot safer for...wind"
  —Josh (03:56)

• Architectural inspiration:
  "Inspired by how palm leaves stick up from the top of a tree before they unfurl...looks like the Jeddah Tower."
  —Chuck (05:33)

• Unexpected historical nugget:
  "Its claim to fame...is that it holds the tomb of Eve...Jeddah is...a derivation of jara, which means grandmother."
  —Chuck (09:28)

• Construction and political drama:
  "Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a big anti corruption purge where he arrested 11 Saudi princes, one of which was the financial backer of the Jeddah Tower."
  —Josh (11:23)

• Pragmatic skepticism:
  "You don't really want to do that when you're building the world's tallest building, but who knows?"
  —Chuck (13:12)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:31: Ambition to surpass Burj Khalifa and build a new city
• 02:02: Target height: one kilometer (3,280 ft)
• 03:46: Adrian Smith, architect of both Jeddah Tower and Burj Khalifa
• 05:33: Inspiration from palm leaves
• 08:15: Observation deck at 2,187 ft, failed helipad plan
• 09:28: Jeddah's legend as location of Eve's tomb
• 09:55: Technical specs: tons of steel, high-speed elevators, apartments, hotel
• 10:59: Political crisis halts construction
• 11:59: Underground sensors ensure structural integrity
• 12:33: Construction resumes, status updates (80 of 167 floors)
• 13:12: Sprint to finish "at breakneck pace"
• 13:24: Mohammed bin Salman links and parallel news events

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Final Thoughts

Josh and Chuck’s discussion blends curiosity, skepticism, humor, and genuine awe at feats of engineering and ambition. The Jeddah Tower’s story is told as a parable of human aspiration—marked by political complications, technical breakthroughs, and cultural curiosities—while also hinting at the challenges of sustaining such outsized dreams in an unpredictable world.

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Useful For:
Anyone seeking quick, comprehensive insight into the Jeddah Tower project, its significance, and why it continues to capture the world’s attention.

Short stuff is out!

Transcript

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[Josh]

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[Josh]

That's right. That's my cue. This is about the Jeddah Tower. J E D D A H. Yep. 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.

[Chuck]

Yeah, it's going to make the Burj Khalifa look like poop.

[Josh]

So let's go back to 2008. There was a billionaire investor named Prince Alawed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. And I think his goal was to make the Burj Khalifa look like poop. He was like, I want to make one taller. I want to build a city around it called the Jeddah Economic City. Terrible name. And basically like they wanted to compete with Dubai, but in Saudi Arabia.

[Chuck]

Right. Because Dubai is in the uae and he wanted to build the first skyscraper to reach over 3,280ft 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 2000. Well, I guess they made it up to 2018 before.

[Josh]

Oh, no year. I was thinking feet.

[Chuck]

Right? No, no, the, the, 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 2018, the year CE. I guess I should have said before they had to halt construction thanks to a bunch of different stuff.

[Josh]

That's right. You know, it's the way you said it when you said they went all the way up to 2018, you know,

[Chuck]

brick by brick all the way to 2018 the year.

[Josh]

So yeah, construction paused in 2018. We'll talk about why here in a minute. And also Covid had a big dent in it. The Burj Khalifa is the current tallest building at 2717ft tall.

[Chuck]

The year.

[Josh]

Oh, no. If you're wondering about the eventual kilometer high building, the Jeddah 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.

[Chuck]

Also, I mean, for a little closer to home, if you don't live in New York, the average two story house is about 20 to 25ft. For comparison. How many Big Macs I looked and I was like, I'm not doing this.

[Josh]

Yeah, that's over. It was designed both Burj Khalifa and the Jeddah Tower by an American architect named Adrian Smith.

[Chuck]

Did not know that.

[Josh]

Yeah. And they're both, you know, it's not a copycat of the Burj Khalifa, but it's definitely similar 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 was like this thing is going to meet the wind in a safer way.

[Chuck]

Yeah, it gets awfully windy the higher up you go. And if you want to, if you're like wind shearing buildings. That sounds interesting. I could not Recommend More. A 1995 New Yorker article called the 59 Story Crisis about when the Citibank. I've talked about it before, I don't know when, but when the Citibank building in the 70s was built and occupied and the engineer architect figured out like, oh God, basically I forgot to carry the one, get everyone out of there. They had to figure out how to shore it up before a hurricane hit that was like on its way. Basically. It's a really, really great article.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

That's right.

[Josh]

Yeah, man, I gotta read that. That sounds great.

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

So the Burj Khalifa. One of the differences is that one tapers in different stages at different sections, but the Jedha Tower is sort of one big triangle. It's gonna be one continuously tapering tower and literally sort of piercing the clouds at one point.

[Chuck]

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, I looked at a picture, I'm like, yep, that looks like the Jetta Tower.

[Josh]

Oh awesome.

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

Yeah, let's do it.

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[Josh]

So we're gonna just give you a few nuts and bolts appropriately about the Jeddah Tower, the big showstopper there will be the observation tower, open air observation tower, which is terrifying. It'll be at 2,187ft. 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. You can't land a helicopter on something that high out here. That's not a good idea.

[Chuck]

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.

[Josh]

Yeah, exactly. Stand in the center of that.

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

Yeah, maybe.

[Chuck]

By the way, Jeddah is actually already at a town there on the Red Sea. There was a guy who was interviewed in this How 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 Jeddah. But I get his point. It's not like Jeddah economic city. But its claim to fame as far as I know is that it is the tomb. It holds the tomb of Eve. Eve of Garden of Eden fame. And they think that. Yes, and they think that Jeddah is the. Is a derivation of jara, which means grandmother. Okay, that's some Raiders of the Lost Ark stuff right there.

[Josh]

Wow. All right. My mind is kind of blown.

[Chuck]

Yeah, it blew my mind too. I just couldn't not share it.

[Josh]

All right, this might blow your mind too. The Jeddah Tower, at least according to its original plans, who knows what's going to end up happening. Will have about 80,000 tons of steel, 59 ultra high speed elevators, 8 escalators, 7 double decker elevators. I think if you're going up to that observatory in Terrace, you're going to go at about 32ft per second, which is pretty fast. And it's a mixed use space. It's going to the bottom third is going to be office space. There's going to be a luxury hotel and then the 167 highest floors, which sounds crazy to say, will be apartments. And of course I'm sure some Very rich, chic, or somebody will own that penthouse at the crown of the whole thing.

[Chuck]

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. I mean, the tower itself is going to be amazing. But yeah, it's just, you know, when you have that much space and that much wealth, there's only so much you can do.

[Josh]

Yeah, agreed. The original name was the Kingdom Tower, and they broke ground in April of 2013. It took more than a year just to lay the foundation. And they have these concrete pilings 10ft in diameter, longer than a football field, that go down very, very, very deep into the earth. And because of these delays, they had to stop. In 2017, when there was a political crisis in Saudi Arabia, there was a move to sort of consolidate power. And Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a big anti corruption purge where he arrested 11 Saudi princes, one of which was the financial backer of the Jeddah Tower and some of the partners in the Saudi bin Laden group. So because of that and Covid, it halted for a lot of years and I think like five years. And I was watching this YouTube video where they basically said, like, when that happens in a place like this, like, you usually tear it down and start over because, you know, sand damage, salt damage, just corrosion to steel and corrosion to the concrete probably makes it very unsafe moving forward. But apparently they had the foresight to install these underground sensors in those pilings, and they could get readings that apparently said, like, we're all good down here.

[Chuck]

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.

[Josh]

Yeah, well, they eventually restarted after Covid, I think in 2023 of September. 2023 is when they finally restarted. They said in 2023 it would be another four or five years, but in 2025, just over a year ago, 60 of the 167 floors have been built. And this year, in January, they passed just recently, the 80 floor mark.

[Chuck]

Yeah. So they're almost halfway there. There is. They're thinking that they might be done in the next couple of years.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

Yeah, that's. You don't really want to do that when you're building the world's tallest building, but who knows?

[Josh]

I agree.

[Chuck]

Also, little fact, if you were like Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he sounds kind of familiar.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

When he did that anti corruption purge, that was the same time that he ordered Jamal Khashoggi, the colonist and dissident.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

So you got anything else?

[Josh]

I have nothing else. We'll see what happens with the Jeddah Tower. I mean, it looks like it'll be finished, you know, I don't know about four or five years from 2023, but we'll see.

[Chuck]

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

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