As part of the activities of The Line exhibition held in Riyadh, the international architecture studios that will work in The Line have been announced.
Adjaye Associates, Morphosis, Studio Fuksas and Coop Himmelb(l)au will be among the UK architects working on plans for The Line.
The Line is a 170-kilometre megacity in Saudi Arabia, which is part of the NEOM development.
While each practice is said to work in a 500-meter section,
Early renderings show two parallel mirror-encrusted skyscrapers running across the desert, with high-speed rails, parks and skywalks between them.
NEOM is the huge “smart city” project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, at a cost of $500 billion.
This also includes a new port, an artificial lake and a ski resort in the desert, and is scheduled to be completed by 2030.
New construction footage of The Line, which will have a population of nine million,
was shown in a video shown earlier last month (January 16).
However, it remains unclear which of The Line’s designs are currently being built,
with a spokesperson for the Dutch practice telling OMA AJ that its proposals did not appear in the latest update.
It is not yet known what other architects are working on in NEOM, as The Line and three other sections of the smart city have so far been announced.
Oxagon, a planned technology hub; Sindalah, the luxury resort designed by Italian studio Luca Dini Architecture;
and Trojena, a mountain ski resort designed by Zaha Hadid Architects that is slated to host the 2029 Asian Games.
The previous British participation in NEOM also includes Norman Foster’s position on the project’s advisory board until 2018.
Neom is a carbon-neutral city
Neom’s Executive Director of Urban Planning, Tarek Kaddoumi, defended the project saying it will revolutionize our current way of life and will be net-zero over its lifetime.
The Line forms one component of the broader Neom project, which will contain 10 regions when complete.
Alongside The Line, an octagonal floating port city and resort island designed by Luca Dini Design and Architecture studio are planned.
The ski resort designed by UNStudio, UK studio Zaha Hadid Architects, US studio Aedas,
German studio LAVA and Australian studio Bureau Proberts will also form part of the project.
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