This stretch of Arabian desert is the size of Belgium.
It’s a 28,000 square kilometre region of sand, mountains and pristine coastline.
And it’s about to be transformed into a mega resort.
World-renowned architects are carving villas into cliff faces, balancing hotels on glistening beach
fronts, building entire towns and constructing a massive new airport so people can get there.
The vast Red Sea Project is set to create
70,000 new jobs and deliver a USD $5.3BN boost to the Saudi economy.
But it will be built on land that is ecologically rich and in need of protection. The area has one
of the world's largest barrier reef systems, and is home to many endangered species.
Building here will be a balancing act of conservation and ambition, all while ensuring
the whole project is energy efficient in one of the hottest and remotest places on Earth.
This is how a desert is being turned into a super-resort.
By nearly every measure, the Red Sea Project is huge.
In Phase One alone 16 hotels will be built – most of them on Shura Island.
That's a place that's surrounded by more than 170 different types of coral
and these natural wonders were the inspiration for
the Foster and Partners-designed resort, aptly named “Coral Bloom”.
The studio incorporated the colours and form of the reef into the buildings of the hotel,
which look almost as though they’ve drifted up on shore.
A new three kilometre crossing will connect it and the other Shura Island hotels to the
mainland and two further resorts – “Southern Dunes” and “Desert Rock”.
Now, Southern Dunes will feature all the luxury that you’d expect from a high end hotel,
but for those of us who quite like the idea of living under a rock,
its neighbour will offer something pretty different.
With villas built into the mountainside,
Desert Rock boasts the kind of architecture that could only emerge from the rugged Arabian terrain.
In a design conceived by Oppenheim Architecture,
guests will enter through a hidden valley nestled between the mountains - the idea
is to connect them with nature and the local culture of the region.
All of these hotels look great, but you’ve got to be able to get to them – and the
answer to that is the construction of an entirely new international airport.
Inspired by desert dunes, it’ll consist of a series of outward-facing shells.
The idea here is to be the anti-airport airport, a stress and hassle-free environment. Passengers
will be taken through a tranquil, streamlined arrival process, complete with a mini-oasis.
The new airport will be strategically located within a three-hour flight of more than 250M
people and within eight hours of 80 percent of the world’s population.
The remote location – more than 500 kilometres away from Jeddah – means that a dedicated
coastal village is being built to house the 14,000 employees who’ll eventually work here.
The village acts as a self-sustaining little city, with its own catering and medical facilities.
And it’s already inhabited — right now,
it’s home to the more than 10,000 people building this massive project.
Now, the Red Sea Development Company wants all of this to be created and maintained sustainably.
Their goal is for the project to be run entirely on renewable
energy and to minimise disruption on the surrounding environment.
But is it really possible for a scheme this big,
one designed to put the region on the global tourism map, to be truly sustainable?
Well, the answer is yes, but the challenges are immense.
Biological diversity is being encouraged through the strategic planting of mangroves,
seagrass, corals and land vegetation.
And many of the project’s buildings are being designed with the environment in mind
and will be optimised to reduce energy consumption.
The hotels on Shaura Island will be made from lightweight materials and manufactured off-site,
allowing for a more energy-efficient construction process.
Their location, which at first glance seems random, is actually extremely
deliberate. They are placed to not only avoid any disruption of the island’s mangrove swamps,
but to establish a defensive wall against erosion.
Back at the International Airport shaded areas and
natural ventilation will help minimise its reliance on air conditioning.
Even it’s overall design is aimed at avoiding waste: it’s made up of five
mini-terminals which can be strategically opened and closed depending on demand.
Desert Rock will draw on the centuries-old architectural practices of the region’s
indigneous people. By carving the buildings into the mountainside they will take advantage of
the thermal properties of stone and be naturally cooler requiring less energy for air conditioning.
Many of the buildings will also help to regenerate native flora
through special rainwater catchment systems placed throughout the resort,
while any excavated material – including stone – will be largely reused in building construction.
While 22 of the region’s islands are being developed, 75 percent of the archipelago
will be left untouched, with nine islands designated as special conservation zones.
The overall project will have no connection to the national grid. Instead, the world’s
largest battery storage facility is being built so that the development can run on solar power.
There are special ecological considerations to be made at almost every turn too:
there will be no waste-to-landfill, and no single-use plastic.
Three seawater reverse-osmosis plants will be built, and where possible, the company is
recycling waste water, reusing it at the landscape nursery or to create new wetland habitats.
Now as you might have guessed, designing and constructing a Belgium-sized development in
the desert – juggling an airport, cave-hotel and whole new infrastructure system — is not easy.
The engineering and design teams have to collate acres of information:
from the intensity of the sun on any given day,
to the erosion of island coastlines, to where best to place indigenous plants.
None of that would be possible without digital collaboration
tools like Autodesk's BIM 360 platform.
What I really like about the Red Sea Project is that sustainability is
embedded in everything that they do, so it's not confined to a function or a discipline,
it's a way of life. This is what Autodesk technology is helping with.
For the team, being able to access the data they need in one, shared area, has meant
avoiding errors, led to smoother collaboration and enabled them to get stuff done faster.
For the most part there’s no searching for hours to find something or confusion over
the latest revision - they’re all able to refer to a single source of truth.
Autodesk was the central platform that enabled processes for designing,
for planning, and for building, all while managing the data,
communicating with the supply chain and ensuring coordination on site even before reaching it.
So, BIM is Red Sea's foundation for creating data, they've also used Autodesk Construction Cloud to
ensure proper collaboration with their ecosystem. They have over 170 companies using this platform
and they have thousands of user contributing to the progress of the project every day.
The automation processes inside Autodesk BIM
360 have also saved the team a tremendous amount of time.
For example by automating one design review process on a single project they estimate
they have saved 1200 hours. Designers can actually focus on what they do best,
which is creating better and more sustainable designs while technology
looks after the more repetitive processes.
It also allowed them to set up 13 entire projects in the cloud in just
90 days, and an additional 26 projects immediately after that.
The Red Sea Project is undeniably ambitious and has set itself some extremely high ecological
and sustainability targets. If it can pull all this off then it would quite dramatically
transform the region turning what was once a desert into an international destination.
It’s a reminder again of the power of construction – one that could establish
new benchmarks for sustainability and for building with our natural world in mnd.
This video was made possible by Autodesk Construction you can learn about that at
the link below – and, as always, if you enjoyed this video and would like to get
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