
King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center
Zaha Hadid Architects
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
This desert laboratory was designed by ZHA to make minimal energy demands in a region renowned for its extreme climate. Focused on a central research building, with angular prows that jut out across the landscaping, the architecture combines structural boldness with complex patterns on the walls and ceilings, giving the long Islamic tradition of geometric form a literal twist.
Photography: Hufton+Crow. Writer: Jonathan Bell

King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center
Zaha Hadid Architects
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
The modular construction allows for future expansion, while covered outdoor circulation areas help mitigate the effects of solar radiation. Perhaps most notably, the building’s musalla (the open space outside a mosque) is the country’s very first prayer space to be designed by a woman.
Photography: Hufton+Crow. Writer: Jonathan Bell

Swartberg House
Openstudio Architects
Karoo Desert, South Africa
Located near the Swartberg mountains on the edge of the Great Karoo desert in South Africa, this four-bedroom home was designed by Openstudio Architects. Built using local materials, the sturdy lodging embraces the diversity of its environment and encourages its inhabitants to exist in harmony alongside nature.
Photography: Richard Davies. Writer: Harriet Thorpe

Swartberg House
Openstudio Architects
Karoo Desert, South Africa
A passive temperature regulating system specified in the brief largely dictated the design. Huge openings with sliding timber shutters were built into the main living spaces, positioned to interact with the sun. The shutters are a shield from heat in the summer and a sun-trap in the winter, warming up the dense brick floors. Maintaining the traditional styles of the area, Openstudio employed local builders and used techniques typical of Karoo architecture, including brick-on-edge floors, roughcast lime-washed plaster walls and the outdoor dry stone wall which encloses the pool.
Photography: Richard Davies. Writer: Harriet Thorpe

King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture
Snøhetta
Gharb Al Dhahran, Az Zahran, Saudi Arabia
Rising up from the eastern deserts of Saudi Arabia like an ancient rock formation, the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture is an ambitious piece of place-making. Nearly a decade in creation, this vast complex was designed by Norwegian firm Snøhetta to serve as a crossroads for many cultures, a geological form rendered in concrete and stainless steel.
Photography: courtesy of Snøhetta. Writer: Jonathan Bell

King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture
Snøhetta
Gharb Al Dhahran, Az Zahran, Saudi Arabia
The centre is broken up into five ‘pebbles’, smooth, shiny objects that glisten in the sun and appear mysterious and monumental on the horizon. A 98m tower is the dominant heart of the composition, with a smaller ‘keystone’ to one side and three lower, sleeker structures rising up out of the desert. Most visible of all is the facade’s ‘veil’, made up of approximately 360km of thin stainless steel pipe wrapped around the centre’s superstructure, and set above a Kalzip metal skin.
Photography: courtesy of Snøhetta. Writer: Jonathan Bell