Starting us off at number five is the world’s next tallest building: the massive Kingdom
Tower at the heart of Jeddah’s new Economic City in Saudi Arabia.
The building’s exact height is still a closely guarded secret, but it’s expected to be
at least one kilometre high making it the first tower on earth to break that barrier.
It will also be the first to reach 200 floors, though you’d never find me at that height.
Getting there will require you travelling in a series of elevators because one single
lift shaft and cable run to the top wouldn’t be possible. The lifts themselves will be
able to travel at a staggering 10 meters per second. They would be able to go faster, but
any greater rate in the change of air pressure as people are transported upwards would be
likely to cause nausea.
Up on Level 157 is an open air platform that is thought to be a private penthouse balcony.
The Kingdom Tower is estimated to cost $1.23BN. Once completed in 2020 – and like most of
the world’s tall buildings – it will house a hotel, office space, luxury apartments,
restaurants and the world’s highest observatory – if you’re brave enough!
In at number four is the project that’s making Panama smaller and its canal a little
bigger. Well, quite a lot bigger actually.
The Panama Canal has been operating at capacity for some time with ships forced to queue on
the Atlantic and Pacific sides respectively for entry. The new $5.25BN project will widen
and deepen the existing channels whilst creating a new channel that’s 3.8 miles long.
In all, the 11 year project that’s due to complete in 2016 will have used 4.4 million
cubic meters of concrete.
Now we’re not sure what happened at number three but it looks like there might have been
some disagreement at the outset about whether a bridge or a tunnel was the best way to link
Hong Kong with Macao and Zhuhai.
Basically there’s a really annoying 50km gap between the three that’s filled with
ocean. And this project gets over – and goes under – that gap.
An initial section of bridge spurs off from Hong Kong airport and heads out into Zhjiang
River Estuary. Off-shore it meets with a man-made island and dives into a section of tunnel
allowing ships to pass above it. Its then up again and onto a staggering 29.6km stretch
of bridge taking you to Zhuhai and Macao without getting wet, all for the price of $10.6BN.
I live in the south east of England and the 50 year debate we’ve had about where best
to position one airport runway pales into insignificance with this next project.
Beijing’s new international airport is currently being built on 2,680 hectares of land in the
Daxing District, about 46km south of the city. The main terminal building is being designed
by Zaha Hadid and will create 7.5 million square feet of indoor space.
The total project is costing $13BN and it will cater for 100M passengers a year coming
in and out across seven different runways when it becomes operational in 2019.
In at number one is the UK’s Crossrail. Now it’s ambition of helping people get
across London might seem a bit modest when compared to some of the other projects on
this list – like an airport with seven different runways, bridging across oceans and the world’s
tallest building – but actually tunnelling underneath Europe’s economic capital and one
of the world’s largest and most historic cities is no mean feat.
At a cost of $20BN, Crossrail is Europe’s largest construction project and involves
forming 85 miles of railway line that will pass through 40 existing and new build stations.
To give you some idea of the level of technicality, one part of the route near Tottenham Court
Road station passes over an existing Northern Line tunnel and under an existing escalator
tunnel with less than a meters clearance each way. The project’s contractors affectionately
named that ‘the eye of the needle’.