URBAN DESIGN OF HISTORICAL PRECINCT OF ADDIRIYAH

Addiriyah, Saudi Arabia

Addiriyah (Diriyah) is the historical home of the Saudi State and it was the state’s first capital in the mid 18th century. The area lay abandoned until 2000 when the  Addiriyah Development Program set up a comprehensive metropolitan development program to highlight its historic role and turn it into a tourist and cultural center at the national level.

The program aims to adapt the site to modern requirements while preserving and reconstructing its historical buildings and monuments, cognizant of the site’s historical, cultural, architectural and environmental features. Addiriyah is home to Turaif Neighborhood, registered in UNESCO World Heritage List.

Sites International, with other international consultants, worked on a schematic landscape master plan for open spaces surrounding the city’s residential communities, the adjacent areas to the valley’s edge, and roads leading to Turaif Neighborhood. The design created a fully integrated project, utilizing the site’s natural gifts of inclinations, slopes, the valley’s topography and  coupled it with streetscape and furniture vocabularies most fitting to this historic location heritage. The result is a wonderful union of built and natural environment.