Kingdom Tower

You've got the Egyptians potentially approving the deployment of troops into Saudi.

And I had reports, and you could tell me if this is true, that Freedom Tower, what is it called, the big tower, Kingdom Tower, was evacuated yesterday.

Was that true?

I haven't heard that.

That's an incredible addition to that city.

Jeddah Tower, for all its troubles, has now restarted.

They're going to have the world's tallest building.

I think I saw this week that it reached the same height as Medeca or something.

It's Je- it's Jeddah.

It's Jeddah, that's right, 'cause it's Kingdom Tower.

Um, I don't know.

With what's going on politically also in, in Saudi Arabia at the moment, uh, wouldn't surprise me if, if, if, if things kind of stopped or paused there until that situation is resolved-

What do you believe is to you the most iconic structure in the world?

The most iconic structure in the world, you know, it probably would have to go back to some of the, you know, whether it's the Eiffel Tower or the Empire Staple, you know, the ones that kind of, I think, inspired people to go, you know, look, we're working on the next world's tallest building that's under construction, Kingdom Tower, and we're...

There's other ones on the drawing boards that are amazing, but what came before them to inspire the possibilities of those buildings, being a New Yorker like the Empire, looking at something like the Empire State Building and looking at something like the Eiffel Tower, those to me are the ones that, it's not just for their presence in the cities, it's what they inspired.

You look at when the Empire State Building was done It stuck out like a tall weed in a rolling meadow.

And now you look at the landscape of New York.

So I think those kinds of buildings are what inspired us to do things like Kingdom Tower.

Very cool.

You said you're a big Yankee fan, so I actually added this one.

But today, bigger and bigger buildings are going up around the world.

Firms are even planning skyscrapers more than a kilometer tall, like the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, three times the size of the Eiffel Tower.

Very soon, Wright's mile-high miracle may be a reality.

So what exactly was stopping us from building these megastructures 70 years ago? And how do we build something a mile high today? In any construction project, each story of the structure needs to be able to support the stories on top of it.

The venue, the view, the speakers.

I did these interviews with, uh, as I said, the guy who's actually building Jeddah Tower with a Jeddah Tower model in the room, which was just incredible.

Uh, the lady behind, uh, Norway's, well, the world's longest and deepest subsea road tunnel being built in Norway.

Mm.

Incredible.

Incredible.

I, I did notice though, at the end of the day, the gentleman there from Jeddah Tower did still about half an hour after the, uh, event had finished, still had a crowd of construction nerds around him asking him questions.

It was, um, it was brilliant.