Kingdom Centre Tower

The Kingdom Centre skyscraper in Riyadh is instantly recognisable by its slender silhouette and the hollow elliptical ring that sits near its apex, a 302-metre structure completed in 2002 that became the defining symbol of modern Saudi Arabia.

The architects — Ellerbe Becket with APCO — resolved the building's program around a concrete skeleton and steel ring that transfers the loads of the occupied floors above, allowing an open void to pass through the centre of the tower at level 27, from which the sky bridge projects.

The sky bridge, accessible to the public, offers a vertiginous horizontal walk above the city and on clear days a view to the edge of the Najd plateau that surrounds Riyadh — views that are most dramatic at dusk, when the desert sky turns amber and the city's lit windows multiply the effect.

Below the tower, a mixed-use podium houses a luxury hotel, offices and the Al-Masmak shopping mall, and the structure anchors one end of the Kingdom Abdulaziz Historical Center master plan that is gradually reshaping the city's central district.

At night the elliptical ring is lit in changing colours that have become synonymous with Riyadh's skyline, and the tower remains the most photographed building in the kingdom, reproduced on postcards, airline sick bags and government publications alike.

The project cost roughly 10 billion Saudi riyals and was developed by Kingdom Holding Company; it remains the preferred landmark for official photographs, national celebrations and the opening sequences of almost every Saudi broadcast, and the sky bridge observation deck draws visitors who want to see the city from above.

The tower was designed to be visible from the major highways approaching Riyadh from north and south, so that visitors arriving by air or road encounter it as an immediate introduction to the city, a piece of urban branding executed with considerable architectural skill.

The shopping mall at its base is one of the most visited in the kingdom, and the hotel — a Four Seasons property — occupies the upper floors, so that guests arrive in the building and rarely need to leave it to feel they have experienced Riyadh.

Its presence defines the skyline of Riyadh and has done so since its completion in 2002, and it has become synonymous with the kingdom's economic ambitions and modernisation drive.

The building's silhouette has become so embedded in the national imagination that it appears on the five-riyal banknote, a rare honour for a modern structure.

It is the defining landmark of Riyadh and arguably the most recognisable modern building in the Arabian Peninsula.

The sky bridge provides an accessible urban viewpoint that is without equal in the city.

The building's engineering — the elliptical ring void and the projecting sky bridge — is architecturally distinctive and widely studied.