AlUla: Stories of design and place

The AlUla Arts Festival returns for its fifth edition, reaffirming its position as a key moment in the global calendar. From 16 January to 14 February, creativity takes centre stage across the landscape – from large-scale works to projects shaped for daily life. Design takes focus this year, following a series of initiatives, including Madrasat Addeera, the AlUla Art and Design Centre, the AlUla Design Award, AlUla Design Residency and Design Space AlUla.

Monocle, in partnership with Arts AlUla, invites you to explore the city’s expansive offering as a hub for art and design. Here, long-standing material knowledge meets contemporary practice, and local expertise moves in step with international perspectives. This partnership brings together a selection of the designers, projects and ideas shaping the festival, offering a lens on how design is being used to respond to place and possibility. Welcome.

Foreword

With its distinct geological formations, ancient and contemporary architecture, AlUla tells stories that span millennia of human creativity. These stories have become references for visitors and local communities that work together across its creative programmes. This deep engagement with place is a guiding principle of design programming in AlUla, focused in and around the growing AlJadidah Arts District. Here Madrasat Addeera, AlUla’s first arts and design centre, offers programmes in traditional arts, empowering artisans to reimagine traditional arts as contemporary design products.

International engagement is also present, with the launch of the AlUla Design Award in 2021 and the AlUla Design Residency in 2023. The residency, part of a wider programme, invites designers to develop site-specific work rooted in the region’s heritage. The designers from this first edition produced a series of pieces designed primarily for the public realm, aimed at improving the quality of life in desert and oasis environments. These works have since travelled beyond AlUla, appearing at international events like Salone del Mobile in Milan and Paris Design Week.

AlUla Design projects presented in this publication are part of the many initiatives of Arts AlUla, which include plans for a contemporary art museum, the development of AlJadidah Arts District and Wadi AlFann (‘Valley of the Arts’), a global cultural destination for land art opening in 2028. As AlUla develops as a global cultural hub, we hope that these projects will inspire you to help write a new chapter in AlUla’s creativity.

— Hamad AlHomeidan, director, arts and creative industries, Royal Commission for AlUla