highlighting AlUla’s growing role as a hub for creativity and cultural innovation
Hamad Alhomiedan, Arts and Creative Industries Director at the Royal Commission for AlUla, is shaping the region’s transformation with deliberate restraint
By Aya Zhang
As you spend time in AlUla, you begin to notice that the place does not boast about its scale, but about how carefully it holds back. The sandstone formations dominate the horizon unapologetically, while the built environment seems to step back. Roads curve gently around rock faces and buildings sit low, melting into sightlines that have existed for centuries.
It is an approach that runs counter to much of what modern development has come to represent. Elsewhere, progress is measured in how tall buildings rise. In AlUla, it is measured in how little is disturbed.
This philosophy was not immediate or absolute. It evolved through years of questioning what development should mean in a place where landscape, archaeology, and living communities exist side by side. Since 2017, the Royal Commission for AlUla has worked within this tension, balancing global access with the responsibility of preservation.
At the centre of that process is a belief that culture is not an overlay, but a foundation. Art, design, and creative practice are not treated as finishing touches, but as tools that guide decision-making, from materials and building heights to how people experience the land itself. It is a model that requires patience, and a willingness to accept limits.
Speaking at the fifth edition of the AlUla Arts Festival 2026, Hamad Alhomiedan reflects on a journey shaped not by expansion, but by careful calibration. As Arts and Creative Industries Director at the Royal Commission for AlUla, his work sits at the meeting point of heritage and ambition, anchored by one constant question: does it belong here?
When Alhomiedan speaks about development, the conversation moves away from numbers and scale. It shifts instead toward intent, responsibility, and long-term consequence. What does development actually mean in a place like AlUla? And who gets to define progress when preservation is part of the brief?
Globally, the word development tends to conjure familiar images: towers rising quickly, density increasing, infrastructure expanding at speed. In AlUla, that definition feels out of place. Development here is quieter, deliberate. It listens to what is already there rather than imposing itself. It is measured not by scale, but by sensitivity. By how carefully progress can exist without erasing the land, its history, or the communities rooted within it.
From the outset, the challenge was never just how to build, but how to pay attention. The landscape of AlUla is not a backdrop; it is a presence, shaping every decision from the curve of a road to the height of a building.
Here, design is not decoration. Walking through AlUla, the echoes of ancient craftsmanship are impossible to ignore. The tombs of Hegra, carved from sandstone more than two thousand years ago, still stand with a precision that feels strikingly contemporary. Their endurance is a quiet benchmark, a reminder that quality is not a modern invention.
For Alhomiedan, that lineage matters. If work created millennia ago can still command attention, today’s interventions must meet the same standard. Doing things carefully and well is a responsibility.
This philosophy extends beyond aesthetics where practical choices reflect the same care. For example, building heights are restricted so the landscape remains visible. Footprints are reduced rather than expanded. Existing structures are sometimes removed to restore balance. Mountains, palms and open sky dominate the experience, not human construction because the aim is to let people experience the beauty of the landscape and feel it.
Materials do tell a similar story. Local resources are prioritised, not for novelty but because they belong. Initiatives such as the design residency and exhibitions like Material Witness invite designers to explore what the land itself provides—palm fibres, slag, and other overlooked materials—reimagining them as furniture or construction elements.
When the conversation turns to ambition, Alhomiedan is clear that AlUla’s future is outward-looking. The region is shaping itself as a cultural and creative hub with a tangible economic role. Creative industries, he notes, are resilient by nature: they generate value while preserving identity. Within Saudi Vision 2030, AlUla contributes to economic diversification and sustainability, welcoming visitors without compromising its integrity.
AlUla is not a place that can be summarised. Photographs capture only fragments. The full impression emerges through walking the oasis, smelling ripening dates, touching the soil, listening to birdsong, or standing beneath a night sky untouched by light pollution. It is an experience that must be felt, not explained.
That careful openness extends to how the future is planned. Large swathes of AlUla remain untouched, protected as natural reserves. Development is guided by clear rules: environmental policies that safeguard the night sky, archaeological assessments that honour the layers of human history embedded in the land.
Art is central to this approach. At sites such as Wadi AlFann, artists engage directly with the landscape, choosing their own sites and responding to the land rather than reshaping it. The works vary in form and scale, but they all share one principle: they must speak AlUla’s language.
When asked what connects him most deeply to the region, Alhomiedan does not hesitate. It is the community. Their presence, openness, and willingness to participate form the backbone of every project in AlUla. Rather than being positioned as observers of change, local voices are embedded within it, shaping outcomes and anchoring progress in lived experience.
Looking ahead, immediate focus is placed on cultural programming that spans art, design, and contemporary practice, strengthening AlUla’s role as a living cultural landscape rather than a static destination. These initiatives form the foundation for what follows: the careful realisation of long-term assets, including districts, institutions, and purpose-built spaces designed to anchor the region’s creative identity for generations to come.
Throughout the conversation, one idea returns with quiet consistency. In a landscape that has endured for hundreds of thousands of years, development is not about competition or visibility. It is about restraint. About knowing when to intervene, and just as importantly, when to step back.
The post AlUla: When The Land Speaks appeared first on Design Middle East.
