Name: The Plan 167
Brand: The Plan
Price: 15.00 EUR
Availability: InStock

By Editorial Staff - 15 December 2025

Located north of Riyadh, Diriyah Art Futures (DAF) is the first museum in the Arabian Gulf dedicated to digital art. Framed as a border at the desert’s edge – a permeable space of separation and connection – the project interprets its site as a threshold between nature and technology, the material and immaterial, and architecture and landscape.

The project, part of the UNESCO site of At-Turaif, was by Italian firm Schiattarella Associati, winner of the competition held by the Saudi Ministry of Culture under the Vision 2030 economic development plan. Intended to preserve a local “architectural biodiversity” that, according to the architects, is increasingly at risk because of the ongoing internationalization and homogenization of cities, DAF is deeply rooted in traditional desert architecture.

The use of materials sourced on site – stone, raw earth, and mud plaster – creates continuity between soil and structure, while the arrangement of the volumes, which follows the organization of ancient settlements, reflects the terrain, with ventilation channels oriented toward a wadi (floodplain), geothermal heating, and rainwater harvesting systems protecting the complex from the region’s sun and heat. By contrast, steel, glass, concrete, and wood – uncommon materials for Saudi interiors – dominate the structure’s underground core, forming a space that embodies the complex’s innovative character and its role in showcasing a form of art that is digital, and therefore immaterial, and a kind of threshold in itself.

The complex comprises studios, exhibition areas, research laboratories, artist residences, an auditorium, and a new media and digital languages training center. Housing them is material-driven architecture that “uses geometry to dynamically organize complexity, embracing contradiction as a life-giving element of architecture”.