AlUla does not conceal itself. It announces its presence immediately
The land feels precise and exacting, not because it can be easily read, but because it confronts you with scale, exposure, and memory all at once. Towering sandstone formations and sacred tombs do not recede into the background. They hold you in place. They call for something beyond recognition.
What does it mean to work in a landscape that appears fully formed, yet continues to shift beneath your feet? What forms of attentiveness does this demand, and how might it reshape the role of the maker?
What does it mean to work in a landscape that appears fully formed, yet continues to shift beneath your feet? What forms of attentiveness does this demand, and how might it reshape the role of the maker?
Design becomes meaningful when place is not a backdrop, but an active agent.
Since its founding in 2023, the AlUla Design Residency has positioned itself not as a program chasing outcomes, but as a curatorial platform through which design might think with, rather than over, a place. Set within a region shaped by ancient cosmologies and contemporary development, the residency exists within a living matrix of temporal and cultural entanglements.
The Royal Commission for AlUla’s Journey Through Time Masterplan outlines a long-term cultural vision that holds both deep continuity and accelerated transformation. Within this context, the residency serves as an instrument for slow research, material inquiry, and spatial negotiation.
The Royal Commission for AlUla’s Journey Through Time Masterplan outlines a long-term cultural vision that holds both deep continuity and accelerated transformation. Within this context, the residency serves as an instrument for slow research, material inquiry, and spatial negotiation.
How can design intervene without extracting? How does it respond when place itself becomes the principal interlocutor?
Curating the second edition was never about repeating a fixed formula. I chose to approach AlUla by listening closely to its unique textures. From the outset, I sought to hold process and product in balance; not privileging one over the other but treating both as part of an ongoing inquiry.
What if design was less about a finished object and more about being present over time? Could it shift from a posture of control toward a practice of care and stewardship?
This year’s cohort included Altin Studio, Aseel Alamoudi, Ori Orisun Merhav, Paul Moustapha Ledron, and Studio ThusThat, who fully immersed themselves in AlUla’s physical, social, and material realities. Chosen for their ability to move across scales and disciplines, from architecture and mineral ecologies to experimental design, they approached their work through sustained listening.
Their making emerged as a direct response, shaped by careful attention to the place.
Curating the second edition was never about repeating a fixed formula. I chose to approach AlUla by listening closely to its unique textures. From the outset, I sought to hold process and product in balance; not privileging one over the other but treating both as part of an ongoing inquiry.
What if design was less about a finished object and more about being present over time? Could it shift from a posture of control toward a practice of care and stewardship?
This year’s cohort included Altin Studio, Aseel Alamoudi, Ori Orisun Merhav, Paul Moustapha Ledron, and Studio ThusThat, who fully immersed themselves in AlUla’s physical, social, and material realities. Chosen for their ability to move across scales and disciplines, from architecture and mineral ecologies to experimental design, they approached their work through sustained listening.
Their making emerged as a direct response, shaped by careful attention to the place.
What has emerged is a shared set of questions. How do we recognize material presence as a collaborator, not just a resource? What new kinds of authorship arise when human and non-human timelines intersect in shaping place? What responsibilities come with design’s limits and its role in complex, shifting landscapes?
Their research took many shapes: site visits with local craftspeople, mapping mineral ecologies, testing materials under extreme conditions. Collecting, recording, tracing, and holding became part of their design practice. Not just preparation but practice itself. These gestures matter not because they aim to solve something, but because they honour the context deeply, acknowledging the subtle textures, histories, and possibilities that a place like AlUla contains.
As a curator, my role is to protect that way of working. AlUla is not a place that can be simplified, nor can its complexity be reduced to clearcut stories or easy explanations. What it asks of me is presence. I do not translate or flatten it into a single narrative but hold open the space where research can remain alive, porous, and responsive.
In doing so, the residency becomes less about producing outcomes and more about cultivating an ecology of attention; one where design is allowed to listen, adapt, and evolve alongside a place that is itself still in motion. And perhaps this is the true measure of its success: whether a residency can grow as an ecology rather than remain bound to a format.
Their research took many shapes: site visits with local craftspeople, mapping mineral ecologies, testing materials under extreme conditions. Collecting, recording, tracing, and holding became part of their design practice. Not just preparation but practice itself. These gestures matter not because they aim to solve something, but because they honour the context deeply, acknowledging the subtle textures, histories, and possibilities that a place like AlUla contains.
As a curator, my role is to protect that way of working. AlUla is not a place that can be simplified, nor can its complexity be reduced to clearcut stories or easy explanations. What it asks of me is presence. I do not translate or flatten it into a single narrative but hold open the space where research can remain alive, porous, and responsive.
In doing so, the residency becomes less about producing outcomes and more about cultivating an ecology of attention; one where design is allowed to listen, adapt, and evolve alongside a place that is itself still in motion. And perhaps this is the true measure of its success: whether a residency can grow as an ecology rather than remain bound to a format.
Dominique Petit-Frère | Founder of Limbo Accra
Curator AlUla Design Residency 2025
Curator AlUla Design Residency 2025
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