Saudi Arabia has given the green light for construction to begin on a mile-high skyscraper in Jeddah, called the Kingdom Tower.

The $30 billion tower will rise 5,000 feet above the Persian Gulf and surrounding desert. It will be engineered with a pendulum structure on top to keep it from tipping over, according to The Daily.

Wired UK reports:

The Kingdom Tower is so big that it would take an elevator 12 minutes to reach the top, and its endless office, hotel and residential spaces will offer 38 million square feet of floor space. It also nearly doubles the world’s current tallest building: the 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

But as anyone who’s ever built a monster Jenga tower will know, extra height causes extra problems. How do you stop a mile-high needle from toppling in the wind, and under its own weight?

What do you guys think? Does the Gulf need another skyscraper? And such a huge one at that?

Photo courtesy of the Daily Mirror.