Architecture

Walk through almost any Saudi city today and one form dominates residential streets: the detached villa, sitting on its own plot, separated from its neighbors, usually surrounded by a wall and reached by car. It feels thoroughly Saudi. But much of the architectural DNA of the modern Saudi house comes from American suburbia.

Is UNESCO being paid off by Qatar so it can own a private airstrip in a strategic location in the Seychelles?

Crooked, forked and curved trees are often treated as second-class timber. They are considered less valuable, and not suitable for load bearing walls or support systems in building. If a tree trunk is not straight enough to become a saw log, it is frequently diverted into pulp production or burned for energy. Now, new research from Aalto University could help change that.

Without blinking indeed: Saudi Arabia has reportedly delayed major work on The Line,  the planned 170-kilometer mirrored city slicing through the desert, until after 2030. Tourism projects along the Red Sea are being pushed back, and Trojena, the fantasy ski resort in the mountains fueled with artificial snow, is also effectively frozen.

A new breed of luxury has landed on the Red Sea, mirrored pods floating above coral reefs, reflecting sky and sea like something not entirely of this Earth. Energy powered by solar powers, drinking water pulled from the sea using desalination. 

What the Star Home demonstrates is something bigger: that health can be built into infrastructure. Instead of relying only on healthcare systems, communities can reduce disease at the source—through smarter design.

When the region settles after the American war with Iran, and it will, American and European travelers will come back. Not just for spectacle or headline projects, but for places that feel real. Places that haven’t been engineered to impress and which get into your soul. We predict that visitors to Saudi Arabia will want to see places like Rijal Alma.When the region settles after the American war with Iran, and it will, American and European travelers will come back. Not just for spectacle or headline projects, but for places that feel real. Places that haven’t been engineered to impress and which get into your soul. We predict that visitors to Saudi Arabia will want to see places like Rijal Alma.

16,000 boxes of archaeological finds are stored in the Valkhof Museum at Nijmegen, the Netherlands. They contain a wealth of Roman artifacts left undisturbed...

A Documented Response to the Article “The Aga Khan Is Greenwashing Their Awards” and a Reflection on the Relationship Between Development, Tourism, and the...

Kinder Rain reinterprets this vernacular architecture through a series of pyramidal classroom volumes, clustered together like houses in a tiny town.

Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled. 

Balsam Madi is an architect and systems thinker whose work bridges culture, sustainability, and design intelligence across the Middle East and Europe.

Researchers develop a brick made largely from recycled Dead Sea salt—offering a potential alternative to carbon-intensive cement.

The failure of The Line is not a failure of imagination. It is a failure of restraint by western architects and planners who go along with the charade. Who is holding these firms accountable? This is actually a reasonable kind of project for the UN to take on and challenge. 

Critics of a new set of luxury towers including Israeli-Greek architect Elias Mesinas, warn that the scale of the towers, loss of public green space, and creeping luxury-led gentrification risk undermining Jerusalem’s historic skyline, community fabric, and long-standing planning principles — raising a fundamental question: not whether Jerusalem should densify, but how it can do so responsibly while preserving what makes the city unique.