Rise Tower, North Pole Project

Smart city systems architecture for the world's tallest building, a 2km, 678-floor vertical city in North Riyadh.

Smart city systems architecture for a 2km, 678-floor vertical city commissioned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, centrepiece of the 306 km² North Pole Project near King Khalid International Airport and a landmark development in the Vision 2030 giga-project cluster alongside NEOM and New Murabba. Six integrated building domains designed from first principles during the pre-construction planning phase: unified building management, AI-powered energy optimisation targeting net-zero operations, multi-layered security and access control, predictive vertical mobility, digital tenant services, and a centralised real-time operations command centre, specified as one coordinated package so contractors bid on all six domains together, not six disconnected tenders.

The Challenge

Rise Tower presented a smart systems design problem with no direct precedent: 678 floors requiring a unified building management architecture across HVAC, lighting, elevators, security, and tenant services, all specified before construction began, without a comparable deployment to reference. The integration architecture had to support a net-zero energy target, multi-thousand-occupant security management, and sub-second vertical mobility coordination across the world's tallest structure.

The Approach

Led smart city systems design across six integrated domains during the pre-construction planning phase, engaged through Meinhardt Group. Developed the IBMS specification for unified control of building services across all 678 floors. Specified the AI-powered energy management framework incorporating facade-integrated photovoltaics and sky-deck renewable generation targeting net-zero operations. Defined the access control and emergency response architecture for thousands of daily occupants. Designed predictive maintenance protocols for vertical mobility systems. Delivered the smart tenant services specification and centralised real-time operations command centre design as procurement-ready technical baselines.

The Outcome

Smart building systems architecture delivered across all six domains during the pre-construction phase. Integration architecture established as the technical baseline for contractor procurement and specification, the first building of this type to specify AI-driven energy optimisation across the full vertical stack, at a scale with no prior deployment to reference.

SME Takeaway

Designing smart systems for 678 floors uses exactly the same integration logic as connecting systems across five departments in a single building: what does each system need to know in real time, what decisions does it make autonomously, and what escalates to a human? Scale multiplies the data volume and the consequence of failure; it does not change the design principles. Establish the integration architecture first; the individual systems follow from it.

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