Design Space AlUla pushes the boundaries of contemporary design practices from local perspectives

Saudi’s oasis region of AlUla, a county the size of Belgium, has been a big part of the country’s cultural tourism drive, notably with Desert X AlUla, a Coachella import looking to showcase site-specific forms of land art against an ancient backdrop of sandstone cliffs and tombs peppered with petroglyphs. In the field of design, the focus has shifted from these ambitious responses to the landscape to a deeper look at what can be done with AlUla’s own histories of craft.

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A case in point is the newly opened Design Space AlUla, located in the restored Jadidah Arts District, which sits next to the Old Town’s 6th-century abandoned mud-brick houses along the former Incense Road. Jadidah means ‘new’ in Arabic and marks urban modernization that began in the 1960’s. 

'The aim in Al Jadidah is to revitalize what is here,' says Sara Ghani, curator of the Design Space, who is interested in pushing the boundaries of contemporary design practices from locally grounded perspectives. Design Space AlUla’s cortex steel perforated façade, for example, incorporates a randomized combination of mashrabiyyah patterns conceived by the Milan-based studio Giò Forma using AI. These reference vernacular features on breeze blocks prevalent in the area, which interact with the shifting natural light to create a new design vocabulary.

Ghani, who has a background in architecture and has been working on Al Ula’s master plan at The Royal Commission for AlUla for five years, admits that the initial impulse was to bring more people to Al Ula. 'We began our work by developing high-end resorts,' she explains, a movement which continues with the newly opened Dar Tantora hotel inspired by the sundials in the Old Town, while luxury properties like the Chedi are slated for Al Ula’s natural heritage sites. In 2027, Tulum’s Azulik Eco-Resort will launch a low-lying biomorphic outpost of 76 rooms nestled into the canyons of the Nabataean Horizon District, which only electric cars can access.

Design Space AlUla’s opening exhibition, 'Mawrid: Celebrating Inspired Design,' which runs until 1 June 2024, opens with a forensic investigation of the colours, textures and resources in AlUla. The research question is around what the future of design can be in this environment. 'The exhibition is driven by the language of our predecessors and what we can learn from them,' Ghani says, whose plans for the space include an archive and workshop.

Unlike art-focused exhibitions, architecture exhibitions are very much about models and materials, but this one feels more like an open work, with the processes behind completed forms and prototypes laid out in small 2D sketches and watercolour compositions. There’s a mirroring of built works by participants of Al Ula’s new design residency in smaller scale, such as the industrial design studio Paris-based Hall.Haus’s phenomenal retro-future outdoor furniture made out of foam. Its curvilinear form mimics dunes and forges a cultural connection between the local majlis and the Moroccan sedari as places to lounge. Saudi designer Leen Aljan showcases another concept for a gathering place in her magnified rendition of the local boardgame Takki, in reclaimed wood. In the exhibition, her drawing and a beige relief map out its modular form.

The exhibition includes the sensitive restoration of the iconic Ammar Bin Yasser mosque at the edge of the Old Town by SAL, a team of female architects led by Salwa Samargandi, as well as a kintsugi-inspired design that merges the old structure of Madrasat Addeera, Saudi Arabia’s first girls’ school, with architectural extensions by UK-based Hopkins Architects, as it becomes AlUla’s new art and design centre. Also on show is Imane Mellah’s minimalist interpretation of ancient Nabatean terracotta lanterns, comprising a wick centred on a sleek clay basin with a stopper on one side that doubles as a handle. 

Another standout, both in form and function, was Riyadh-based Teeb Made’s layered date serving set, evoking Saudi’s White Mountain and Khaybar, a volcanic field in the Hejaz region. Made both in smoky basalt and white stone, a conical form with a flattened top holds one container for the dates inside another for the pips. Even Bahrain-based architect Sara Kanoo’s intricate set of wearable clasps, her first jewellery collection, came from thoughtful research into ancient visions of an afterlife — a stepped pyramid-like arrangement of squares reflecting Najdi architecture and rmotifs on AlUla’s Nabatean tombs.

With these interdisciplinary exchanges, new ways of understanding local craft are emerging from older ways of inhabiting space.

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