On 16th February, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, announced the creation of a new development company of which he himself will be the president. This new development company, wholly owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), is called New Murabba Development Company (NMDC). As its name suggests, its primary and sole purpose will be to develop a new development centre in the northwest of Riyadh, at the intersection of King Salman and King Khalid Roads in the Saudi capital. However, New Murabba is not just any development plan. According to the press release issued by the royal house, it is the “world’s largest modern downtown“. Let’s see why.
A total area of 19 km2, 25 million m2 of built-up area, more than 104,000 residential units, 9,000 hotel rooms, more than 980,000 m2 of retail space, 1.4 million m2 of office space, 620,000 m2 of leisure space and 1.8 million m2 of space dedicated to community facilities. To the above figures must be added the almost €45 billion the project is expected to contribute to the country’s “non-oil GDP” and the 334,000 direct and indirect jobs it will create by 2030, when it is expected to be completed. Beyond the exorbitant scale of the urban development, however, one central and emblematic architectural feature of the project stands out: the Mukaab (a term derived from the Arabic word for ‘cube’).
The Mukaab, a building in the shape of a perfect cube with 400 m sides and a floor area of 2 million m2, will occupy the centre of the New Murabba development. To get an idea of its dimensions, according to its promoters, it can hold up to 30 times the Eiffel Tower in Paris. As if that were not enough, it will house another building inside it in the form of “a tower atop a spiral base”.
For its part, the tower will bring together facilities to become “a premium hospitality destination with a multitude of retail, cultural and tourist attractions, along with residential and hotel units, commercial spaces, and recreational facilities”. Finally, according to the first renderings of the project, a gigantic dome will envelop the tower inside the Mukaab. And that dome will support the necessary digital and virtual technology, “with the latest holographics”, to provide visitors, residents and guests with a truly “internal immersive experience“.
Whether this is science fiction or reality will have to wait until 2030. In the meantime, you can check it all out and enjoy the project with this video:
Source and images: New Murabba.
