Saudi Arabia’s megaproject The Line is insanely ambitious which is reason enough to inspire disbelief. Thankfully, the larger-than-life development comes with regular, real updates by The Line chief operating officer Giles Pendleton on LinkedIn, in a series titled ‘Neom is real.’ In its latest video, which is numbered part 13 and was released at the property fair MIPIM, viewers get a dekko at the extensive foundation work taking place at The Line site. The documentary revealed a very interesting fact: this humongous development stands 500m tall and 170 km long and will be divided into 140 modules that will each be 800 meters long and designed by different architects.
The video also sheds light on site clearing work, foundation setup, and piling operations on the first phase of the development, touted to be completed by 2030. This massive operation enlists around 260 excavators and 2,000 trucks and is the world’s biggest earthworks operation. The hardworking teams are excavating so much sand that it can fill 800 Olympic-sized pools every week. The Line, a self-sustaining city with zero net emissions, was developed by US studio Morphosis.
The aforementioned 140 modules will be done by several architecture studios including Morphosis, Cook Haffner Architecture Platform, and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. In addition to the earthworks operations, Neom has also claimed that the world’s largest piling operation is in progress on the Line. “We have done a lot of the foundation work literally and figuratively,” the Line’s chief development officer Denis Hickey adds. 4,500 piles had been driven as part of foundation works on The Line, and if this momentum is maintained then nothing stands in the way of the completion of the first phase by 2030.
Cynics and critics have openly expressed their skepticism which the Saudi Crown Prince MBS has denounced. The Discovery Channel documentary on YouTube shared his thoughts, “They say a lot of projects in Saudi Arabia can’t be done, they’re too ambitious,” MBS said. “They can keep saying that and we can keep proving them wrong.”
