An architectural portrait of the region that turned desert coastlines into the world's laboratory for record-breaking height.
Oil gave the region money. Money gave it ambition. And ambition gave architects carte blanche to build what is now impossible anywhere else on the planet.
In Dubai, the word “impossible” does not exist — only the question of price and time From a reporter's field journal, 2014
In just thirty years, the Middle East has travelled from an oil-fuelled periphery to the world's leading laboratory of supertall construction. Three of the planet's five tallest buildings were born here, and so is the first tower in history set to clear the one-kilometre mark.
The region is simultaneously closing records of the past and financing records of the future. NEOM, The Line, King's Tower, Burj Azizi — dozens of projects reshaping the very definition of a vertical city. This is not the architecture of compromise — this is the architecture of statement.
A Y-shaped plan in section, a three-lobed profile engineered around its own shadow. Sixteen years on, it remains the absolute world record. No taller building has yet appeared on the horizon.
The region's shortest vertical hierarchy — buildings above 300 m, completed and in design through 2030.
Eight capitals and megacities that carry the skyscraper landscape of the Middle East. Sized by the number of buildings above 150 m.
A hundred years — from Kuwait City's first high-rise landmark to Jeddah's bid for the kilometre. Five moments when the region raised the bar.
The Middle East is the world's most honest architectural region: it builds what it wants to see and never apologises for scale. Read on · skyscrapersinfo.ltd