Saudi Arabia breaks ground on $50B Mukaab, the ‘world’s largest building’ — which could hold 20 Empire State Buildings
It’s an out-of-the-box undertaking.
Ground has officially been broken in Saudi Arabia for what is expected to be the “world’s largest building.”
The ambitious, $50 billion project — called the Mukaab — in the capital city, Riyadh, is part of a wave of futuristic construction across the Arab nation, the Sun reported.
The skyline-redefining Mukaab will clock in at 1,300 feet high and 1,200 feet wide when completed — giving it enough volume to contain 20 Empire State Buildings, the outlet reported.
Offering fine dining, retail space, offices and restaurants, the massive cube will be its own downtown-in-a-box with 2 million square feet of floor space.
Many will also call the cube home — as it will feature 104,000 residential units and 9,000 hotel rooms.
The builder boasts that the Mukaab will be “human-first” and that green spaces will be accessible within 15 minutes of any location in the cube.
The New Murabba Development Company also boasts that it will use artificial intelligence to create immersive experiences for Mukaab visitors. That includes gigantic screens that will cover the outside of the square — in the style of the Las Vegas Sphere.
Though the project is meant to move Saudi Arabia toward a more modern future, the company said it is deriving design inspiration from the local ecology and regional architecture.
The buildings and area surrounding the metropolitan oasis are inspired by wadis — the Arabic term for a riverbed formation. Winding structured pathways partially lined with smaller buildings will recreate the likeness of desert streams flowing through craggy rocks leading up to the neck-craning edifice.
The square design itself is considered a reference to the regional Najdi architecture style. Nadji is characterized by mudbrick buildings, triangular or rectangular window and door openings and centralized outdoor courtyards.
The Mukaab is expected to add over $51 billion to non-oil GDP and create 334,000 jobs.
New Murabba Development Company says the project will use about 900 workers and will be completed by 2030.
The new project is one facet of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s attempts to modernize the country. His “Saudi Vision 2030” project aims to reduce the nation’s dependence on oil revenue, diversify the economy, and build up public service sectors.
Bin Salman has ambitiously laid plans to build across the peninsula, which include a floating port city called Oxagon located on the Red Sea coast, a mountain tourism destination called Trojena and a “futuristic” city in the northwest part of the country called NEOM that will be powered entirely by renewable energy.
The Kingdom also has laid plans for “The Line” — a concept building that will be 105 miles long and theoretically be home to 9 million people.
The Line will be run on renewable energy and be built on a footprint of 13 square miles. That project will purportedly cost $1 trillion to execute.
All of these projects are projected to be completed by 2030.
