AlUla Design Residency & Design Award

Since 2023, Emily Marant has steered the strategic development of AlUla’s design ecosystem as Senior Design Advisor to AFALULA, building the AlUla Design Residency, the AlUla Design Award, and the AlUla Designathon. Together with AFALULA and the Royal Commission for AlUla, each residency pairs its designers with AlUla’s own resources: palm groves, desert stone, and the craftspeople who work them, turning local material knowledge into a source for new design. Home to Hegra, Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site, AlUla is part of a broader intercultural and heritage development programme led by the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) and AFALULA.

Studio Marant has coordinated two editions of the Residency. The first, Unguessed Kinships (2023), ran in the palm grove of Mabiti AlUla, under curator Ali Ismail Karimi and assistant curator Osione Itegboje. Four studios took part: Leo Orta, Studio Raw Material, Hall Haus, and Leen Ajlan, producing installations, objects, and public-realm furniture that respond directly to desert and oasis conditions; the work travelled on to Salone del Mobile in Milan and Lafayette Anticipations during Paris Design Week.

The second, Material Witness (2025), ran as a three-month residency for five studios: Altin Studio, Aseel Othman Alamoudi, Ori Orisun Merhav, Paul Moustapha Ledron, and Studio ThusThat, working with palm fibre, basalt, brass, and ceramic under curator Dominique Petit-Frère. The resulting exhibition opens during the AlUla Arts Festival in 2026.