While Jeddah is Saudi Arabia’s second-largest city, in many ways the Kingdom Tower belongs to a very different second city – Chicago: home of the world’s first skyscraper in 1884, and the world’s tallest, the Sears (now Willis) Tower, between 1974 and 1998.
Smith started as a young architect in SOM’s Chicago office in 1967, going on to design skyscrapers worldwide including the Burj Khalifa.
When he finally left to co-found AS+GG in 2006, he set up shop in a 1911 Chicago skyscraper – from where the Kingdom Tower was designed in 2009.