How Saudi bought Britain’s architects Visionaries can't resist the desert

Could Saudi Arabia be the holiday destination of your dreams? Perhaps so, if you’re a member of the Westminster jet set. Yesterday, British journalist Emily Maitlis raved about her mini-break in “conservative but chic” Jeddah, where a friend assured her she didn’t even have to go “full burqa”. And last month, Carrie Johnson posted a series of Instagram photos of her “very luxurious” family adventure at a Red Sea resort, featuring sunsets, passion-fruit cocktails, and a former British prime minister.

In a bid to wean his nation off its oil addiction, de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has approved the building of numerous such resorts to lure high-end tourists to the kingdom. The most egregious, and least plausible, is a ski resort planned for the arid mountain town of Trojena, which plans to pump out snow for three months a year for the merriment of international ski bums. This energy-guzzling resort forms part of Neom, MBS’s futuristic giga-project in north-west Saudi Arabia. If you look it up online, you will find a fantasy world of yachting marinas, soaring buildings, and elegant people in European attire exploring the rugged beauty of Arabia and its dazzling Red Sea coast.

For many Western architects hedged by planning laws at home, the lure of building in Saudi Arabia’s wild west is irresistible — despite the nation’s abysmal record on human rights and the environment. Even after the murder and dismemberment of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, at the hands of a team sent specially from Riyadh, the architectural bonanza continues apace. According to Architects’ Journal, dozens of UK architecture firms are understood to be involved in Vision 2030, the array of projects overseen by MBS, of which Neom forms a part.

One of these firms is Foster + Partners. Although English architect Norman Foster stepped back from the board overseeing Neom after Khashoggi’s murder, his practice has only deepened its engagement. It is currently designing a two-kilometre-high tower near Riyadh, set to be the world’s tallest; a six-runway “aerotropolis”; and what is described as “the world’s first fully immersive experiential marine life centre” at the Amaala Red Sea resort on the Gulf. For his role in building Neom’s airport, Foster has been strongly reprimanded by the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN), which stated that “based on Saudi Arabia’s reputation for human rights abuse, slavery, and deaths in construction, working on projects there which are not critical would be unethical” — and contrary to the Royal Institute of British Architects’ professional code of practice.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen beautiful football stadiums are also being designed by global architects including Populous and Foster + Partners. These are under construction or renovation ahead of the 2034 World Cup, which was awarded by FIFA to Saudi Arabia last December amid controversies about changed voting procedures and the concerns of human rights organisations.

In accepting such fantastical commissions, Western architects are choosing to overlook not only the murder of Khashoggi, but also the fallout from MBS’s massive construction projects. The region where Neom is located is the heartland of the Huwaitat tribe — rivals to the Al Saud. According to human rights group ALQST, Saudi authorities have illegally displaced local tribes to make way for Neom, and cracked down violently on tribe members who resisted eviction. Several have been sentenced to execution. Today, the Huwaitats’ goat-hair tents have been replaced by temporary trailer-parks, housing more than 100,000 bureaucrats and construction workers.

Since then, The Wall Street Journal has exposed malpractice and corruption at the highest level of Neom, with senior executives who were banned for corruption in Europe still practising freely in Arabia. As the newspaper put it, MBS “allows what many consider bad behavior as long as an executive delivers on his vision”. Meanwhile, on the ground, workers on The Line are reportedly subjected to 16-hour days and poor working conditions. An ITV documentary aired last October, Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia, estimated that 21,000 workers from Nepal, India and Bangladesh have died since 2016 while working on Saudi’s giga-projects.

If bad behaviour won’t give MBS pause, perhaps the project’s finances will, as hoped-for foreign investors are deterred less by human rights abuses than Neom’s dubious economic prospects. According to the WSJ, a draft board audit last summer estimated the amount required to complete Neom by 2080 at $8.8 trillion — that’s 25 times more than the annual Saudi budget. The audit found “evidence of deliberate manipulation” of finances by “certain members of management”, aided by McKinsey & Co.

Yet it seems little will tear MBS from his futuristic vision. And so it is worth asking what Neom’s design reveals about its autocratic patron. The jewel in Neom’s crown is The Line, a steel and glass structure some 170 kilometres long with mirrors for walls and cascading terraces with plants and ponds. Nothing about its design seems “Islamic”. The original model was devised by veteran American architect Thom Mayne, who, unlike the late Tom Payette, designer of the impressive Aga Khan hospital in Karachi, has no experience of working in Muslim environments. Before designing the hospital, Payette, at his client’s request, visited numerous sites from Spain to Pakistan to study different styles of Islamic architecture. The idea was to learn how qualities of Muslim living as well as architecture could be incorporated into the hospital’s design. So far Mayne has made no such efforts.

It might not be too outlandish to describe Mayne’s linear vision as “Islamically illiterate” in terms of both its aesthetic as well as its social vision. While there may not be a consensus about what constitutes “Islamic architecture” globally, the rhythmic opposition of earth-bound domes and soaring minarets that characterise iconic masterpieces like the Taj Mahal in India or the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, Turkey, are conspicuously absent. As Mayne himself explained to the Saudis, The Line’s rectilinear structure was inspired by deconstructing a map of New York.

In awarding the contract to Western designers oblivious of Muslim contexts, MBS and his apparatchiks demonstrated either an ignorance of the aesthetic and cultural traditions prevailing in the Muslim world, or, more probably, a disdain for them. Such contempt was on full display when the Al Saud clan destroyed the Ottoman fabric of Mecca, turning the holy city of Islam into a replica of Las Vegas.

In a recent plea to UK architects, Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan, told the Architects’ Journal: “I’m proud that you are helping Saudi Arabia to develop, and this is what Jamal wanted, but please speak to them [Saudi Arabia’s ruling royal family] and remind them there is unfinished business here, which is Jamal.” It seems unlikely that in Saudi Arabia, a Disneyland for ambitious British architects, that Hanan’s plea will make the slightest headway. As J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, supposedly said when asked to explain the appeal of working on atomic weapons: “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it.”