Spatial sequencing of urban and garden spaces, rooms, and patios are absolutely central to the Al-Urubah Park Design. Mirroring the heritage of Riyadh and its traditional architecture, this urban design principle pursues a key form of sculptural morphology, by which comprehensive cubic modules are juxtaposed and explored to create a superlatively modern design.

The sequencing of spaces as well as the understanding of the building and the garden as co-constituting coherent entities – the core elements of Arabic spatial culture – are translated into contemporary typologies and a modern design language. As a linkage to the past, however, historical and traditional reminiscences are clearly recognisable, thus harnessing a powerful emotional potential that roots a people with their environment and heritage.

Our design ambition is to create an iconic, highly impressionable, and multi-purpose parkland which delights the people of Riyadh and attracts visitors from around the world. The Arabic concept of an ideally formed space follows the traditional idea of framed and enveloped spatial units that are characterised through sequences of spaces. Al-Urubah Park is conceptualised through the cultural motif of the souk marketplace; whose physical and metaphorical qualities drive the landscape strategy in three distinct ways:

1 / the grid as an unambiguous, organisational design language;

2 / unique, diversiform elements which form a united whole;

3 / and the setting in which earthly treasures are procured and enjoyed.

These treasures connote to the idiosyncratic identities and ambience of Al-Urubah’s gardens, which form a dense and interwoven network of atmospheres existing in correlation to nature and creating a hybrid entity of built environment, landscape, and water.