Challenge• To provide a People Flow® solution for one of the largest structures that allows up to 75,000 people to leave the buildings in 30 minutes or less for prayers five times a day
Solution• Special design team that met regularly with key stakeholders worldwide• Specially recruited project team who were trained specifically for this undertaking• Massive amounts of equipment to handle People Flow as seen nowhere else in the world
Makkah Clock Royal Tower Hotel• Year of completion: 2012Clock tower:• Height: 601 m• Floors: 120Podium:• Height: 115 m• Floors: 15
KONE SolutionsClock tower:• 89 KONE MiniSpace™ elevators• 5 KONE MonoSpace® Special elevators• 16 KONE extra heavy-duty, high-efficiency TransvarioescalatorsPodium:• 75 KONE MiniSpace™ elevators• 4 KONE MonoSpace® Special elevators• 111 KONE extra heavy-duty, high-efficiency Transvario escalatorsAdjacent towers:• 10 KONE MiniSpace™ elevators• 2 Helipad elevators• 6 KONE extra heavy-duty, high-efficiency Transvario escalators
Building for the masses
The holy city of Makkah is home to the world’s largest mosque, the Masjid Al Haram. The mosque can hold up to 600 000 people and is currently undergoing expansion to increase the total size to accommodate an additional one million people.
The Makkah Clock Royal Tower Hotel project provides high quality accommodation and recreation for visitors to the Masjid Al Haram, situated directly adjacent to the hotel. The structure is made up of seven towers, which all rest upon a 15-story podium that includes a retail area. The three towers on either side of the clock tower are between 200 and 300 meters tall. The clock tower stands at 601 meters. In one of its grandest undertakings, KONE delivered a People Flow® solution like no other.
Moving the masses
“Visitors to Makkah normally practice formal prayers five times per day,” says Tarek Elnaggar, Senior Vice President at KONE who was regional director for KONE Middle East during the project. “The goal of the customer is to ensure that up to 75,000 people can exit all 7 buildings through the podium in an organized and timely manner every prayer time.”
This required a thorough study for optimum people flow solutions, resulting in an extraordinary amount of equipment: over 100 escalators and more than 180 elevators in the podium and clock tower alone. In addition, KONE implemented special group control software with artificial intelligence capabilities to learn and track passenger traffic patterns in order to optimize people fl ow. The elevators include large shuttles that can hold 54 passengers each and take visitors up to the 15th level, one of the sky lobbies of the tower.