Riddle in the sands
Here’s a riddle. You are working on AlUla, one of the world’s most high-profile infrastructure projects. But you don’t want your work to be seen.
How can that be?
Joseph Daniels – Founder of Project Etopia, on young builders, engineers and architects in the Middle East
It was the same principle that informed the architect Florian Boje when he designed Maraya, the most high-profile new building to materialise at AlUla so far. His mirror-clad building – the largest of its type in the world – reflects the landscape and the light. Similarly, the Sharaan hotel, designed by prize-winning French architect Jean Nouvel, will be hidden within one of AlUla's sandstone hills.
It is that rock that poses both technical challenges and creative opportunities. The oasis, nestled beneath the Hijaz mountains, is a desert landscape forged by lava flows, wind erosion and ancient and modern watercourses. Precambrian formations – among the most ancient rocks on the planet – lie beneath sandstone and alongside volcanic basalt.
The infrastructure experts AECOM will be charged with that sensitive task. Lara Poloni is understandably reluctant to give too many details at this juncture about the roads, railways, trams, water supply and the other multifarious and multimillion-dollar decisions that will need to be taken in this ‘invisible’ project. In October 2021, AECOM signed a strategic agreement with the Royal Commission to implement the first stage of AlUla’s $15 billion masterplan.
“We have the masterplan vision,” she says. “It’s about working through the details.”
Yet, it’s clear that these 21st-century builders will be undertaking their own ‘journey through time’. Poloni marvels at how the Nabatean and later inhabitants designed roads and channels to preserve and capture water and found ways to live in these fierce and arid conditions.
Paid Partnership
This is not a gated resort, nor a fenced-off reserve.
AlUla is designed to bring out the explorer in everyone
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER SIX
A futurologist on building better in the Middle East
Anitta Mendiratta
Sculpted by wind, crafted by humanity: the AlUla landscape
Infrastructure and City Building
There’s a gentle breeze. The shadows are always changing. It is just a breathtaking, magical place
In the Middle East, they have the hunger, passion and intelligence to do things in new ways. They can write
the new sustainability rulebook.
They also have a lot of foresight and a young, very educated population. They’re saying, okay, we understand the past, but how do we take the next steps? They are taking affirmative action
Look at the amazing desalination work. In the past 25 years,
places like Saudi have become the best in the world. They are
less scared of the water crisis than a lot of other nations
Joseph Daniels is the founder of Project Etopia, a UK-based consultancy dedicated to pioneering net-zero technology for homes. The company is now expanding into the Middle East.
Founder and CEO Daniels believes that the region which supplied the fossil fuels that powered 20th-century economies now has the potential – and the technical know-how – to forge a very different kind of future.
“The Middle East has seen the value of creating a green, positive future. They are at the forefront of extremes: look at the temperatures they get – they have to be.
It’s no surprise that the biggest action on sustainability you’re seeing is in the hottest countries. They realise that our buildings have to have resilience and be built better. We are going to become more reliant on our built environment.
They also have a lot of foresight and a young, very educated population. They’re saying, okay, we understand the past, but how do we take the next steps? They are taking affirmative action.”
AIUIa in 2035
How will a visitor experience the promised ‘Journey through Time’ as the AlUla masterplan nears completion?
What's in the area?
Gérard Mestrallet, executive chairman of the French Agency for AlUla Development
The new resorts – Habitas, the Banyan Tree and Jean Nouvel's audacious resort built into the very rocks of AlUla – will be a huge draw: but those visitors will not be cocooned away from the life of AlUla city and the surrounding country. There will be the chance to visit the Bedouin camps, the craft shops and the restored old town, and see at first hand the epic work of conservation and rewilding that’s central to the AlUla vision.
Tap the pins to explore
AlUla Old Town
Depopulated in the 1980s, the historic centre of AlUla province is now reborn as a centre for crafts,
arts and dining.
Location label here
Link to URL if available
Scroll to explore
More from this series...
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
How will AlUla balance development against the protection of human and natural heritage?
Click to explore
A landscape sculpted by nature and humans
Location label here
Link to URL if available
For many scholars, the ancient kingdom of the Lihyanites – mentioned in the Hebrew Bible – is a barely-discovered masterpiece that equals Nabatean Hegra.
Dadan
Scroll to explore
Can any new large-scale tourism project have sustainability at its heart? AlUla could be a test case – and a model
Invisibility is one of our principles. The challenge is making as much of the infrastructure invisible to respect the nature of the environment and the architecture
Lara Poloni – President of the global infrastructure consulting firm AECOM
It is some of that exposed rock that gave the Nabatean masons and artists the raw material to create Hegra and led scholars and craftsmen from the many peoples who have come to AlUla to carve a literary legacy on the rock face of Jabal Ikmah.
Untouched, AlUla is already an extraordinary sight. You can understand why modern builders and architects want to leave well alone.
Still, the vision is to attract two million tourists by the year 2030. That will require roads and hotels, pipes and electricity – infrastructure.
Two million tourists might sound a lot, but bear in mind that’s an annual number of visitors, and they will be scattered across an area the size of Belgium.
Gérard Mestrallet, executive chairman of Afalula, the French Agency for AlUla Development, sums up the challenge bluntly: “This is a jewel of humanity, and we have to protect it.”
We’re really learning from their principles.
They had advanced water and
agriculture management
Lara Poloni – President of the global infrastructure consulting firm AECOM
According to Jacques Attali, another significant figure in the AlUla plan, we should look beyond for examples of countries
that have planned their development – especially their tourism development.
His gaze falls on two Himalayan kingdoms which have approached infrastructure development in very different ways. “Compare Nepal and Bhutan,” he advises. “Nepal did not succeed – it has been all but destroyed by tourism. Bhutan did succeed – it kept its authenticity.”
Attali is a genuine renaissance man. It’s hard to think of many people who could help raise funds for a project of AlUla’s scale (he founded the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), and also make sure those funds are used responsibly (he is also a founder of the Positive Planet non-profit). His economic history books are based on his journey through time – he focuses on what the past can teach us about the future. And as a musician and conductor, he says he would ‘dream’ of taking to the stage at AlUla’s Maraya concert hall.
Only Attali’s other career – as a science fiction novelist – poses a problem. Like many writers who describe the future, his vision tends to be pretty bleak and dystopian.
But he sees plenty of hope for the future in AlUla, a place he describes as “at the corner of the past and the future.”
“They can recover the past and rediscover its biodiversity,” he says. ‘It is a fantastic place… a playground for experimenting with many things from archaeology to contemporary art.”
Lara Poloni
AECOM President
There will be five distinct districts, each offering a distinct perspective
on the past, present and future of this unique land in the northwest of Saudi Arabia.
Location label here
Link to URL if available
The history of the region, Islamic and pre-Islamic, is carved and preserved in the mountainside.
Jabal Ikmah
Location label here
Link to URL if available
An encounter with the southern kingdom of the ancient world’s most enigmatic civilisation.
Nabatean Horizon
Location label here
Link to URL if available
The 100 rock tombs that, with Petra, stand as the Nabateans’ extraordinary legacy in Arabia.
Hegra Historical City
If you look at a map you imagine this is an emptiness... And you try to figure out how humanity could have found some existence here
Simon Calder – Travel editor of The Independent
It was the same principle that informed the architect Jean Nouvel when he designed Maraya, the most high-profile new building to materialise at AlUla so far. His mirror-clad building – the largest of its type in the world – reflects the landscape and the light. In that sense, his building, too, is ‘invisible’. Nouvel’s next project, the Sharaan hotel, will be hidden within one of AlUla’s sandstone hills.
It is that rock that poses both technical challenges and creative opportunities. The oasis, nestled beneath the Hijaz mountains, is a desert landscape forged by lava flows, wind erosion and ancient and modern watercourses. Precambrian formations – among the most ancient rocks on the planet – lie beneath sandstone and alongside volcanic basalt.
Invisibility is one of our principles. The challenge is making as much of the infrastructure invisible to respect the nature of the environment and the architecture
Lara Poloni – President of the global infrastructure consulting firm AECOM
“I can’t think of anywhere in the world,” he says, “where this combination of very ancient and very modern has been brought together so successfully in such a – I was going to say ‘harsh’ environment, but that’s not the word: it’s a benign place, this oasis.”
How will a visitor experience the promised ‘Journey through Time’ as the AlUla masterplan nears completion?
Location label here
Link to URL if available
Depopulated in the 1980s, the historic centre of AlUla province is now reborn as a centre for crafts,
arts and dining.
Aiula old town
Location label here
Link to URL if available
For many scholars, the ancient kingdom of the Lihyanites – mentioned in the Hebrew Bible – is a barely-discovered masterpiece that equals Nabatean Hegra.
Dadan
We’re not building roads,
we’re creating journeys
Dr Khaled Azzam – The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London and member of the AlUla board of directors
We’re really learning from
their principles. They had advanced water and
agriculture management.
Lara Poloni – President of the global infrastructure consulting firm AECOM
A last thought
More from this series...
An interview with Joseph Daniels
Read more
Why AlUla is seeking investors who have something more than a return on capital on their minds
Past and future returns
Finance and Investment
Read more
How will AlUla balance development with the protection of its human and natural heritage?
Room to roam
Nature and Heritage
Read more
This is not a gated resort, nor a fenced-off reserve. AlUla is designed to bring out the explorer in everyone
An open secret
Tourism and hospitality
Read more
This is not a gated resort, nor a fenced-off reserve. AlUla is designed to bring out the explorer in everyone.
An open secret
Tourism and hospitality
Read more
How will AlUla balance development with the protection of its human and natural heritage?
Room to roam
Nature and Heritage
Read more
Why AlUla is seeking investors who have something more than a return on capital on their minds
Past and future returns
Finance and Investment
Open-air tram cars allow passengers an uninterrupted view of AlUla
Gérard Mestrallet, executive chairman of the French Agency for the Development of AlUla
Special Advisor to Secretary General at The UN World Tourism Organisation
Dr Azzam and Afalula Design Director Waleed Shalaan explain the vision for AlUla
Jacques Attali, former Head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
According to Jacques Atali, another significant figure in the AlUla plan, we should look beyond for examples of countries that have planned their development – especially
their tourism development.
His gaze falls on two Himalayan kingdoms which have approached infrastructure development in very different ways.
“Compare Nepal and Bhutan,” he advises. “Nepal did not succeed – it has been all but destroyed by tourism. Bhutan did succeed –
it kept its authenticity.”
Atali is a genuine renaissance man. It’s hard
to think of many people who could help raise funds for a project of AlUla’s scale (he founded the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), and also make sure those
funds are used responsibly (he is also a founder of the Positive Planet non-profit).
His economic history books are based on his journey through time – he focuses on what
the past can teach us about the future. And
as a musician and conductor, he says he
would ‘dream’ of taking to the stage at
AlUla’s Maraya concert hall.
Only Atali’s other career – as a science fiction novelist – poses a problem. Like many writers who describe the future, his vision tends to
be pretty bleak and dystopian.
But he sees plenty of hope for the future in AlUla, a place he describes as “at the corner
of the past and the future.”
“They can recover the past and rediscover its biodiversity,” he says. ‘It is a fantastic place…
a playground for experimenting with many things from archaeology to contemporary art.”
Read more
Architecture and Design
Why the landscape of AlUl teaches humility to even the starriest architects and designers
The embrace of time
Read more
Artists, craftspeople and explorers of all kinds are again finding inspiration in AlUla – including a female astronaut from the 25th century
The voyagers
ARTS AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Read more
Artists, craftspeople and explorers of all kinds are again finding inspiration in AlUla – including a female astronaut from the 25th century
The voyagers
ARTS AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Read more
Why the landscape of AlUl teaches humility to even the starriest architects and designers
The embrace of time
Architecture and Design
Read more
Artists, craftspeople and explorers of all kinds are again finding inspiration in AlUla – including a female astronaut from the 25th century
The voyagers
ARTS AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
Partner Content
Partner Content