While Saudi Arabia’s desert is heating up, Neom – the kingdom’s grandiose plan to create a city fit to house the future of humanity – seems to crumble.
A new report from the Financial Times cites high-level sources within the project to paint a picture of dysfunction and failure at the heart of the quixotic effort.
No one is surprised. This hits particularly hard:
One such addition is an upside-down building, dubbed “the chandelier,” that is supposed to hang over a “gateway” marina to the city: As architects worked through the plans, the chandelier began to seem implausible. One recalled warning Tarek Qaddumi, The Line’s executive director, of the difficulty of suspending a 30-storey building upside down from a bridge hundreds of metres in the air. “You do realise the earth is spinning? And that tall towers sway?” he said. The chandelier, the architect explained, could “start to move like a pendulum”, then “pick up speed”, and eventually “break off”, crashing into the marina below.
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