November 7, 2008—King Abdullah of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia opened an international architectural exhibition “Towards the First World” in the capital Jeddah, in October. The exhibition, organized by the Makkah Governorate, is being held for a period of three months and will showcase all the mega development projects in the Middle East worth more than SR10 billion.
Sweden-based Natural User Interface (NUI), providers of interactive multi-touch solutions, in partnership with France-based byVOLTA, delivered a customized multi-touch software solution with three Horizons for the exhibition. The Horizon is NUI’s latest commercially available interactive multi-touch table. NUI says that its multi-touch technology helps real estate and architecture companies show the importance of their projects in an interactive, intelligent, and appealing way.
Among the projects demonstrated on the Horizon were Kingdom City and Kingdom Tower, two projects of Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding, a real estate company owned by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. Kingdom Tower aims to be the world’s tallest building, with an estimated cost of about $40 billion and a height of at least 1 km.
Kingdom City is located 20 kilometers from the old city of Jeddah near King Abdulaziz International Airport and will cover an area of 7 square miles. It is expected to house 80,000 residents and accommodate more than 250,000 visitors. It is the first time the designs for both projects are being revealed to the public.
Sama Dubai, a subsidiary of Dubai Holding, a holding company set up by the government of Dubai, presented a project on the Horizon called Dubai Towers, which will be built in Jeddah.
The other projects demonstrated on the Horizons were Jeddah Gate and King Abdullah Economic City, from public joint stock company Dubai-based Emaar Properties, reportedly one of the world’s largest real estate companies.
