Foster + Partners Behind Plans for World’s Tallest Building

Architects’ Journal has announced that Foster + Partners is working on a multibillion-dollar project to build the world’s tallest building — a 2-km-high skyscraper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, twice the height of the current record holder: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s 828-m-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai, completed in 2010. The scheme, reportedly backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), will sit on a site close to King Khalid International Airport, north of the Saudi capital. The Saudi capital’s current tallest structure is the 10-year-old PIF Tower in the city’s King Abdullah Financial District. This stands at 385 m and was designed by HOK and local architecture and engineering company Omrania. The city will also soon become home to the Mukaab tower — a 400-m-tall cube-shaped skyscraper designed by Atkins and billed as the largest “inner-city building in the world.”