The Government Building at Taif (GBT) is the secretariat of the Saudi Arabian King and his council of ministers during the summer months. The Government has two seats of power other than the capital Riyadh. One is at Jeddah during the Hajj pilgrimage and the other at Taif, the summer capital.

The secretariat took three years to build and was situated in the centre of Taif inside an old Turkish fort. The English architects painstakingly restored the fort which I had to measure and draw as part of my work as the site architect. But when the building was completed, the fort was promptly torn down as the Saudis despised the Turks and its occupation armies.