THE race for the skies has taken its time to come to Riyadh, a city with few landmarks that sprawls over almost 2,000 square kilometres. But two organisations - both headed by nephews of King Fahd - have now joined battle in a fight that is taking the capital’s architecture to giddy new heights.

The latest to enter the fray is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz, the mega-investor with a $12,000 million fortune and a penchant for making a splash. After a flurry of activity in the last two years, his $430 million Kingdom Centre looks set to become Saudi Arabia’s tallest building. At 300 metres high, it will be the same height as the Eiffel Tower. Not unimportantly, the Kingdom Centre will also be 40 metres taller than the Al-Faisaliah Center, a similar tower development being built by the King Faisal Foundation just a kilometre away.

Prince Alwaleed’s 30-floor skyscraper, under construction off Olaya’s Oruba Street, is ostensibly intended as the headquarters of his global business empire. But it will be much more besides and not least, he hopes, a money-maker in its own right. Below the offices of his Kingdom Holding Company - to be located on the uppermost occupable floor - the complex will contain a five-star Four Seasons Hotel, luxury apartments, a three- level shopping centre with one veil-free floor for women only, the head office of United Saudi Bank, of which the prince is chairman, and some of Riyadh’s most desirable office space. Overall, the project will provide an area of some 3.3 million square feet and, it is aimed, a 7.2 per cent annual rate of return in the first 10 years.

The most striking element of all is the design of the building itself. The tower’s 30 floors will be crowned with a vast sculptural addition - a 120-metre- high arch, with a crosspiece featuring a viewing deck. ‘The prince wanted a symbol of the future…an icon for the millenium,’ explains architect Richard Varda of US firm Ellerbe Becket. ‘We tried to keep it as simple a shape as possible but modern, forward-looking, with a softness.’ The shape of the arch itself is a catenary - the shape formed by a cable hanging between two points and acted on by no force other than gravity.

Prince Alwaleed rejects suggestions that the project might be overly extravagant. ‘There is no ego at all in this matter,’ he said in a newspaper interview. ‘The project makes economic sense. Saudi Arabia needs high- quality office space, high-quality retail, and a high-quality hotel. We said, ‘Why not put everything together?’ If you are going to go 30 floors, you might as well go high-rise, have a landmark. I owe it to my country to have a landmark. It’s important to have the tallest building. It adds value.’

In a city where buildings average five storeys and very few exceed 10, the Kingdom Centre has also exercised the planning authorities. To some, Riyadh looks too flat. Others, conservatives, ask why traditional architectural norms should be changed. High-rise developments could also violate the privacy of people in surrounding areas, they say.

Happily, a compromise has been reached, whereby planners will lift city- wide restrictions on building height in the corridor between the King Fahd highway and Olaya Street, provided that certain conditions are met. In the case of the Kingdom Centre, this has included an undertaking to develop more land for public use at ground level.

The site is designed to be accessible from four directions, with distinct entrances for each of the primary facilities. Two low-rise units will adjoin the tower. The retail mall will lie to the east and be accessible from Olaya Street. A wedding and conference hall and public areas for the hotel will stand to the west. The lobby of the tower itself will be divided, the west half forming part of the hotel and the east leading into the retail mall.

The first 180 metres of the tower - the occupied floors - will be built around a concrete frame. The remaining 120 metres - the sculpture - will be constructed of steel. All of the vertical surfaces will be reflective, with the bulk of the windows facing north and south to avoid the worst impact of the sun, which is from the west. The streamlined shape of the building will help deflect the wind.

The consortium of designers on the project was led by Ellerbe Becket and the local Omrania & Associates but also drew on the expertise of others including: Ove Arup of the UK, the structural and facade engineer for the tower; Wilson & Associates of Dallas, the hotel interior designers; and Altoon & Porter of Los Angeles who helped design the shopping mall.

The design process was facilitated by the internet - available selectively in Saudi Arabia - which allowed information to be transferred rapidly between Ellerbe Becket’s Minneapolis head office and Riyadh. ‘For us it was an exciting experience,’ says Basem al-Shihabi of Omrania. ‘We had large-size drawings travelling back and forth by e-mail.’ In this way, work on the designs - not completed until construction was underway - could continue in both places, unimpeded by different time zones and weekends.

Tight deadlines have been set for delivery of the project, partly due to competition with the Al-Faisaliah Center, where work is slightly more advanced.

The local El-Seif Engineering Contracting took the contracts for foundation work and construction of three underground floors and is favourite of six bidders to continue on the job. After a series of delays to allow contractors more time to prepare their bids, quotes for the main construction work, an estimated $210 million-230 million job, were submitted in mid-March.

Construction has already slipped several months behind schedule, partly due to problems with ground conditions. Underground work is not expected to be finished until June. But an award is now imminent to build the boldest new addition to Riyadh’s skyline. By mid-2000, Prince Alwaleed will be able to look out from a base quite as high-profile as any of his other investments.