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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

Because it's Friday night, here's some additional, off-topic, trivia: http://superset.eu/abraj.jpg

That's the Daily Mail's windmill size picture, set beside the Abraj Al-Bait. My hobby is pointing out the existence of this building to people. Please forgive the jpg artifacts and the horrible photoshopping, but the point is, this is to scale. (give or take a few %)

Now, it's not the worlds tallest building per say, but certainly the most collosal thing ever made by mankind. Of course (where else) in Saudi Arabia. As shown schematically in the image, its dimensions are insane x nuts x wtf.

EDIT: fix image link

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Wow that's ugly (the Saudi hotel not the wind turbine). Totally worth demolishing an ancient fort and levelling the hill it stood on to make room for it. Saudi seems to have no interest at all in preserving any heritage or significant sites.

Newest build turbines are 220m diameter, so 50% larger than that. Those will be used on the Dogger Bank windfarm that, IIRC starts construction next year. I dread to think what will be a state of the art diameter in 2029.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/01/worlds-l...

Money can't buy taste.

My friend calls it a Saudi Barad Dur.

I'll follow his line, and call the Markaz al Mamlaka in Riyadh a Saudi Orthanc for completeness

>Totally worth demolishing an ancient fort and levelling the hill it stood on to make room for it.

1780 CE isn't exactly ancient. As to whether it was "worth it," I imagine the intended benefits were more about providing somewhere to accommodate 8 million visitors to the city than the aesthetic preference of skyscrapers to forts. (Though personally, I don't see how it's 'ugly'.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajyad_Fortress

More recent than I remembered when the reports of the hill being flattened were doing the rounds when it was built, but it doesn't stand alone. Saudi has quite some considerable track record of clearing significant Muslim and historic sites to build yet another slab sided monstrosity[1].

Ugly is subjective, but to my eyes it's a large McMansion. Which would normally imply trying to look more expensive than it is, using random features and jarring or anachronistic details, but in this case with colossal budget that clearly doesn't apply. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_early_Islamic_h...

Maybe not the tallest, but still the 3rd tallest, and completely dominates the Great Mosque and the Kaaba.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d0/80/35/d08035e818165925562b836e7...

Now that is the House of Saud.

Its always nice to see where my petrol money went.

The image is not accessible.

Thanks, fixed.

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