Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Scope: Design

Year: 2017

Status: Complete

Team: Khalid Henaidy, Asia Khan, Joao De Matos.

Briefing:

To endow an existing public space with a public garden, organise and reduce the number of parking spaces and qualify the urban environment of the Neighborhood.

Architectural Solution:

The rapid growth of the city has left many undefined public spaces that require retro-fitting.

In this specific instance an empty square located in the mids of a residential neighborhood, currently used as an improvised parking lot offers the possibility of redefining the neighborhood’s environment and strengthening bonds amongst its inhabitants.

The proposal unifies the existing space under one geometrical grid that will be used to “step” the garden and adapt it to the site’s topography as well as define a hard-scaped edge that will contain the soft-scaped areas.

A clump of palm trees will simultaneously shade the garden and form a green mass that will fill the void of the of the open space of the square strengthening its presence within the neighborhood.