Yanbu Cement Factory

On the site of a cement factory that disfigured a piece of the Red Sea coastline, in the desert 480 km north of Jeddah, we wanted to create a bona fide city for the employees of the factory, complete with restaurants, a sports centre, a shopping mall, an auditorium for social events, schools, gardens and, most important of all, a residential area that would be a pleasurable place to live, with all of the homes featuring their own garden overlooking the Red Sea. As well as generating a high standard of living for the direct users, the site has also become a hub for the entire surrounding region, which is populated by Bedouins who live in small villages, who have started to make use of the project’s commercial, educational and recreational infrastructures, rendering it an open city, with the capacity to provide services and, crucially, one that gives rise to social and cultural exchanges with the inhabitants of the region.