AlUla Design Exibition

Our role has been to build the international presence and positioning of AlUla’s design programme: developing the relationships, platforms and opportunities through which AlUla’s design practice reaches audiences beyond the region. AlUla, in northwest Saudi Arabia, is developing into a major cultural destination, and design is one part of that transformation.

The residency has been one of the main vehicles for this work. Each year, we bring designers to AlUla for an extended stay, pairing them with the region’s own landscape, materials, and local craftspeople to produce new work. We built this programme: defining its curatorial approach, selecting designers for each edition, connecting international design practices with what AlUla itself has to offer. The work extends beyond the residencies themselves : identifying the right institutions and cultural platforms abroad, building partnerships, creating opportunities for the resulting work to be shown.

This has meant building a recurring presence across several institutions: Lafayette Anticipations, a contemporary art foundation in Paris; the Institut du Monde Arabe, dedicated to Arab culture; and Paris Design Week, one of the design world’s major annual gatherings. The AlUla Design Awards, which recognise work produced during the residency, opened another entry point into the international design community. The collaboration with Lafayette Anticipations brought AlUla’s design practice into dialogue with a broader European audience.

This work is anchored in a wider network: AFALULA, the French agency driving AlUla’s development; Arts AlUla, its arts and culture programme; and Villa Hegra, its platform in Paris, spanning contemporary art, design, architecture, heritage and cultural exchange.