Kingdom Centre
— — a steel arch with the sky pulled through it.
Not only on a wall.
“A three-hundred-and-two-metre tower on Olaya Street in central Riyadh, finished in 2002 and shaped by a wide inverted parabolic arch carved out of the upper floors. The Sky Bridge crosses the opening at the ninety-ninth floor, looking down over the desert capital. A Four Seasons hotel, a vertical mall, and private apartments share the building. After sunset, the arch lights up in shifting colour above the city.
Kingdom Centre, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Kingdom Centre, Burj Al-Mamlaka, stands 302 m tall in the Olaya district of central Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The 41-storey tower was completed in 2002 to a design by Ellerbe Becket and the Saudi firm Omrania, with Al Muhaidib and El-Seif as the main contractors. The Kingdom Holding Company, owned by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, commissioned and still owns the building. Riyadh itself sits on the Nejd plateau at about 612 m above sea level and counts more than 7 million residents across its metropolitan area.
The defining feature is the inverted parabolic arch cut through the upper floors, spanning a fifty-six-metre opening crossed by a steel Sky Bridge on the 99th floor at about 300 m. The bridge holds a public observation deck open to ticket-holders. After dark, programmable lights run colour across the underside of the arch, shifting through the holidays — green for Saudi National Day each September, red and white at Eid. The tower won the 2002 Emporis Skyscraper Award the year it opened.
The Sky Bridge observation deck is open to the public daily, with timed tickets sold in the lobby. The first three floors hold Kingdom Mall, with around 160 retailers and a women-only floor on level three. The Four Seasons Hotel takes floors 4 through 16 and has 243 rooms. Private apartments fill the higher levels. The tower sits beside the Olaya corridor served by the Riyadh Metro's blue line, which opened to riders in late 2024.