PRESS RELEASE
16.02.2024
Design Space AlUla – Opened
A magical place in the desert gets a new attraction
1100 kilometres north of Riyadh, the Design Space AlUla opens with the exhibition "Mawrid: Celebrating Inspired Design", designed by ATELIER BRÜCKNER. The opening ceremony will take place on 16 February. AlUla is an oasis valley, known for the Hegra UNESCO World Heritage Site and the AlUla Arts Festival. It is a place where people have lived for thousands of years, where travellers, pilgrims and traders meet. It magically attracts designers from all over the world.
Design Space AlUla, a building designed by Giò Forma Studio, is located in the popular AlJadidah Arts District. It combines an archive, a gallery and a workshop area open to all design disciplines: from product and graphic design to urban planning. The exhibition, workshop and archive areas bear the signature of ATELIER BRÜCKNER.
Sara Ghani, Curator, Design Space AlUla said, "Design Space AlUla commits to celebrating AlUla’s natural history, its cultural heritage, and vernacular materials - inspiring sustainable futures that are rooted in place. Our ambition is to fuel the design economy, provide resources to designers to explore and experiment, and be a place for visitors to research, explore and connect with the processes behind AlUla’s design journey."
The opening exhibition "Mawrid: Celebrating Inspired Design" showcases the design process of ten recent projects related to AlUla. The Arabic word 'Mawrid' means source, root. The exhibition leads from the natural materials and culturally rich design language of the place in the first exhibition area to the realised projects. Finally, interactive, tactile and digital installations encourage visitors to become designers themselves.
ATELIER BRÜCKNER uses traditional mudbricks to fix analogue and digital displays. Breezeblocks, characteristic of AlJadidah, serve as the basic structure of the exhibition elements. They will be available for local projects from June, following the exhibition. The exhibited architectural projects themselves will be included in the Design Space AlUla archive. It is intended to grow and serve visitors as an inspirational resource and living compendium of local design initiatives.
Projects explored in the exhibition include Giò Forma Studio / Black Engineering’s Maraya, a 9,740m2 mirror-clad venue that blends with its awe- inspiring surroundings, echoing the natural textures and colours of AlUla; the plans for the renovation of Madrasat Addeera, AlUla’s first arts and design centre, by UK based Hopkins Architects; Roth Architecture’s Azulik Eco Resort which draws inspiration from the stories of wind and erosion, ensuring the project seamlessly integrates with its natural surroundings; SAL Architects’ renovation of the historic Ammar Bin Yasser Mosque, which collaborated closely with the community to ensure a respectful and harmonious transformation; and AlUla’s Cultural Oasis District Masterplan, guided by Prior + Partners in collaboration with Allies and Morrison, each driven by the mission to cherish and protect the cultural and natural landscape that has made AlUla a place where communities, travellers, traders and pilgrims have, for millennia, wanted to live, pass through, rest, and exchange cultural traditions.
Other exhibitors include finalists from the second edition of AlUla Design Award Imane Mellah, Teeb, Sara Kanoo and Shaddah Studio, and representation from the first edition of the AlUla Design Residency. The residency is a five-month programme in AlUla that brings together designers and experts on-site to work across multiple disciplines such as infrastructure development and architectural design, exploring public realm interventions and urban furniture, sustainability and local building materials. The five design practices engaged in the residency are: Bahraini–danish from Bahrain and Denmark, Hall Haus from France, Studio Leo Orta from France, Studio Raw Material from India, and Leen Ajlan from Saudi Arabia.
The exhibition also explores the visual identity for Design Space AlUla created by Clara Sancho Studio and design agency 29Letters from Madrid. The logo draws on a wide range of inspiration from across AlUla, from ancient inscriptions at Jabal Ikmah to the distinctive breezeblocks in AlJadidah and other architectural elements of AlUla’s more recent visual terrain.
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ATELIER BRÜCKNER is an internationally leading design studio and museum planner for visitor experiences. Founded in Stuttgart in 1997 as a small experimental studio for architecture, exhibition and scenography, ATELIER BRÜCKNER has rapidly become a world-renowned name in exhibition
design within the last 25 years. With more than 220 projects completed worldwide and around 25 ongoing, ATELIER BRÜCKNER has an extensive portfolio designing experiences for museums and cultural institutions around the world. In the GCC, recently opened projects are the new Children's Museum at the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Museum of the Future in Dubai. Ongoing projects include the Past Time Galleries at the new London Museum, the GEM Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and the studio’s role as experience designer for the Mukaab at the New Murabba District in Riyadh.
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INFORMATION:
Exhibition "Mawrid: Celebrating Inspired Design". 15 February until 1 June 2024
Opening hours:
Sunday to Thursday: 4 pm to 10 pm
Friday and Saturday: 10 am to 2 pm and 4 pm to 9 pm
www.experiencealula.com T. +966 9200 25003
Address:
Design Space AlUla
AlJadidah Arts District
JWJ6+3Q al-'Ula Saudi Arabia
Contact for media enquiries:
Alice Broughton I I +44 7816 773 544
Laetitia Tregoning I I +971 (0) 567 242 154
CONTACT
ATELIER BRÜCKNER GmbH
Claudia Luxbacher
Press and Public Relations
T. +49 711 5000 77 126
F. +49 711 5000 77 22
presse(at)atelier-brueckner.com