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Building a new Riyadh
Saturday, 03 October 2009

Unaffected by the global economic downturn, Saudi Arabia is furiously constructing its King Abdullah Financial District, a project destined to become a new city centre for Riyadh. Now with a mere 30 months left to finish the bulk of the work, the pace is fast and the challenge immense.

When Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud takes a keen personal interest in the success of a particular project, you can almost guarantee it will be seen through to completion without delay.

Such is the case with the US $10 billion (SR37.5 billion) King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), a project which not only bears his name, but will send a definitive signal to the rest of the world that the kingdom is well on its way to modernity.

As the epicentre of Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning financial services sector, KAFD is expected to redefine Riyadh from the nation’s rather boring administrative capital to a sleek business and entertainment hub.

Centrally located on Riyadh’s King Fahd Highway, the development will feature more than 40 towers with all the facilities, amenities, utilities and transport networks you would come to expect in a well-designed city of the 21st century.

The catch, is that the majority of this 1.6 million m2 project is to be constructed in just 3.5 years; and with King Abdullah receiving regular progress reports, those involved know the pressure is on to deliver.

The company in charge is Rayadah Investment, an arm of the government’s Public Pensions Agency (PPA), which aside from taking care of social security is also charged with investing huge sums of money in real estate development.

After finalising a master plan design by Denmark’s Henning Larsen, Rayadah awarded four design and build contracts for the first 10 parcels of land. Saudi Binladin Group picked up four mixed-use parcels, while Saudi Construction, El Seif Engineering and Saudi Oger each, picked up two.

Construction started last November and with a fast-tracked contract period of 30 months this first stage is expected to finish around mid 2011.

Meanwhile, Rayadah is on the verge of awarding stage two - a multi-billion dollar design and build contract for another 30 parcels, which will make up “the bulk of the project” says Rayadah’s project manager Waleed Aleisa.

“It will probably be awarded late September or early October. We’ll most likely go with one contractor for the whole thing because we want to make sure there are no conflicting logistical problems.”

Under the fast tracked contract 27 of the 30 parcels are expected to be finished in just 30 months, which gives a deadline of around mid 2012. Aleisa won’t divulge who is in the running for the massive award, but says it is three of Saudi Arabia’s biggest contractors which are “capable of pulling it off.”

While Rayadah is developing the vast majority of KAFD itself, four of the most central parcels will be developed by sub-developers including the Capital Market Authority (CMA), the Saudi stock exchange Tadawul, Samba Bank and Al Rajhi Bank.

Each is constructing its own tower in KAFD’s financial plaza with CMA and Tadawul having the two tallest in the development respectively. They will each have to adhere to stringent design criteria laid down by Rayadah as well as stick to the same deadline.

Overall it’s expected that by mid-2012 around 70% of KAFD will be built out, with the remaining land developed over time according to demand.


Such a speedy timeframe to complete such a mammoth project was not always on the agenda, says Aleisa, but came about as a result of the economic downturn.

“The crisis drove down costs, made tenders more competitive and made more resources available to us,” he says.

“So the decision was made by higher authorities to do as much as possible within the shorter time frame and take advantage of the situation.”

In addition to this, Saudi Arabia’s leadership is keen to see the kingdom’s financial services sector develop as quickly as possible as they attempt to diversify the economy away from oil dependency – a near impossible task without quality office space or a cohesive CBD.

“We did a customer leads analysis and found that there is a huge deficit in ‘Class A’ office space in Riyadh and Saudi Arabia,” says Aleisa.

“This is what most financial services companies want, along with having a designated area that is conducive for business. There is a huge demand for this project and this is one reason why we’re in such a rush.”

While the financial services industry will sustain the city, Alesia is quick to point out that this is not where the function of KAFD ends, describing the project as “a new city centre for Riyadh”.

“We went to great lengths during design to ensure that we create a vibrant mixed-use city that is lively during the day and evening,” he says.

“We went to 11 countries to study their financial centres and found that this is very important – you don’t want a ghost town at night.”

As such 26% of KAFD’s 5 million m2 built up area will be designated for residential apartments designed for local and international customers. There will also be a total of six hotels and a fair proportion of KAFD has been set aside for retail and attractions.

Alesia says there will be 11 “attractors” designed to bring people into the city for entertainment including an aquarium, a financial academy, an arts and heritage museum and a geosciences museum.

Tying all of this together is a master plan design that seeks to create a harmonious relationship between the business, residential, retail and entertainment elements of the city.

Central to the plan is KAFD’s “wadi” concept; a subterranean pedestrian area running throughout the development which include water features and greenery and will be heavily shaded by the surrounding towers.

The idea is to create a communal outdoor space that is comfortable, visually stimulating and a common linking feature between retail facilities and towers.

With the wadi as a central theme KAFD seems to be a city designed for the pedestrian. Alesia says real effort has gone into designing a complex road network which will ensure that for the most part car traffic is hidden away from public spaces.

This requires that every single tower will have four underground levels of parking linked to main service roads. The heavily built-up area around the financial plaza will even have a double-decker road network which will consist of a subterranean road mimicking the path of the ground level road.

All of this will be complemented by a monorail service around the development and an enormous network of elevated skywalks between the towers. Alesia says the skywalks will effectively allow you to walk from one end of the city to the other without leaving the comfort of air-conditioning.

“This city is very unique for Saudi Arabia,” he says.

“Currently there is nothing else that is this well thought-out, well-designed and built from scratch. We are trying to create the perfect environment for people to both work and enjoy.”

KAFD will also be up to standard with its environmental credentials. The entire site is expected to at least achieve the basic Leed environmental certification – which will be the first Leed accredited buildings in Riyadh.

“We have a design guideline that states the energy saving we want the buildings to achieve, which basically comes down to how you deal with solar gain,” he says.

“One of the concepts is that the buildings are orientated in a certain way to be in shade most of the time. We’ll also have grey water treatment facility in each building.”

The architects from FX Fowle, who are designing Saudi Binladin’s parcels, say they are also using local materials and stone in the construction which will also help score Leed points.

The US-based FX-Fowle is one of several international architects working on KAFD. Upon its completion Alesia expects to be able to proudly point out various towers designed by a long list of well-known firms.

For now this vision is still a long way off. At the moment the contractors are only on the basement levels of the first ten parcels and furiously working 24 hours a day to stay on target.

Alesia says 2000m3 of concrete is being poured each day and 80,000m3 is in the ground so far. At the end of stage two, he says, a whopping 4 million t3 will have been poured.

But the big question remains, are they going to meet the mid-2012 deadline which the powers-at-be are expecting?

Alesia is confident. “I have no doubt. At the beginning we had a problem with procuring resources, but now it’s just dealing with the logistics and complexity of the site, it’s a real challenge but we’ll make it.”

KAFD features

• More than 40 towers
• Four levels of underground parking in each tower
• A huge central pedestrian area or “wadi”
• A monorail network
• Elevated skywalk corridors linking each tower
• Leed certification for the entire development
• A 100,000 tonne district cooling system
• A tier four data centre



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