Meet the Architects: The talent behind AlUla's newest museums

The ancient desert of AlUla, dubbed the world’s largest living museum, will soon be home to two new built ones: Museum of the Incense Road and the Contemporary Art Museum.

These new additions are the first of the region’s "15 cultural assets" development, part of a 15-year plan to transform AlUla into a global hub for culture and tourism.

Paris-based, Beirut-born architect Lina Ghotmeh and British architect Asif Khan were chosen via an international competition and a jury of specialists in architecture, landscape, museology, and landscape. The jury was supported by a technical panel chaired by Khaled Azzam, the renowned architect and director of The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London, who is now on the Royal Commission for AlUla’s board of directors.

“AlUla is a spectacular landscape of discovery, where heritage, works of nature, and humankind combine to reveal a long and intimate relationship between people and their environment,” Azzam said. “This masterplan will guide the reinvigoration of AlUla, establishing a new cultural legacy, including the implementation of a circular economy, expected to create 38,000 new jobs.”

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The two new museums will further embellish AlUla’s natural landscape. Like other developments underway within the region, architecture plans for the museums intend to work with nature, merging contemporary structures with natural materials to further complement the existing beauty of the area.

Khan, awarded a British MBE for his services to architecture and currently working on renewing the Barbican Centre in London and the new London Museum, stressed creating a space in dialogue with nature was crucial for him while planning the structure for the Museum of the Incense Road.

“The surrounding landscape, nature, sand dunes, and oases of AlUla are a great source of inspiration forme,”hesaid.“They will greet the structure of the museum, which takes the form of a public space, not a traditional museum with walls. Stepped terraces of gardens within the museum will serve as connecting points between the institution and the surrounding natural landscape.”

The Museum of the Incense Road, which will be in AlJadidah and characterised by various galleries and spaces for sensory experiences and education, will be dedicated to the history and cultural memory of the Incense Road. It’s important not only as a meeting point for the world’s ancient civilisations that passed through AlUla as they journeyed the route, but also for its continued cultural legacy today. It will serve as the world’s first museum dedicated to the epic millennia-old network of major land and sea trading routes.

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The Contemporary Art Museum, on the other hand, will be designed by Ghotmeh, who is behind London’s Serpentine Pavilion, which was unveiled in June. She is renowned for her agility in marrying the realms of architecture, art, and design.

Ghotmeh’s plan for the museum also incorporates the singular aesthetic beauty of AlUla’s natural landscape, its lush oasis, and ancient rocky formations. The structure, she explains, will be in the form of a series of garden pavilions, offering “a constant interplay between art and nature.”

The Contemporary Art Museum collection, which will constitute the primary art museum in AlUla, will comprise a core collection of works by artists from regions situated along the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the eastern Mediterranean.

“We’re focusing on artists of the 21st century, who come from the regions adjoining these bodies of water, or have deep, long-standing connections with them,” said Iwona Blazwick, the chair of the Royal Commission for AlUla’s Public Art Expert Panel, during an announcement about the museums in Venice. The second collection is called Continents, comprising artists from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South and Central America, while a third will present a series of land artworks.

Both museums aim to further celebrate AlUla’s role as a contemporary and ancient place for cultural and economic exchange at the confluence of present and past civilisations.