King Abdullah International Gardens scoops second Cityscape award

12/10/2010

Project adds architecture accolade to its Cityscape award tally

King Abdullah's International Gardens (KAIG) scooped a second Cityscape Award this week at the Cityscape Awards for Architecture, held at the Grand Hyatt in Dubai on 5 October.

The joint venture team of leading British consultancies, Barton Willmore and Buro Happold, secured the Leisure Future Award ahead of stiff international competition.

KAIG was commissioned by the City of Riyadh as a gift to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to celebrate his accession to the throne, it is currently out to tender to contractors, with a view to beginning on site in early 2011.

Over recent years the Cityscape Architectural Awards have become a major focus for emerging market countries, rewarding excellence in architecture and design from the regions of the Gulf States, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America and South and East Asia and Latin America.

KAIG’s design includes a 10-hectare building which will house the world’s largest indoor garden. It will be set within a 160-hectare site in the arid desert of the Saudi central region. Visitors will be able to walk amongst plants, trees and flowers which lived over 400 million years ago, as well as a range of external gardens which will include a maze, butterfly enclosure and aviary.

Leading British architecture and planning consultancy Barton Willmore and international multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold won an international competition in 2007 to design KAIG.

Barton Willmore provided masterplanning, architecture and landscape design services and Buro Happold provided project management services and structural, building services and infrastructure engineering design, as well as a range of specialist consultancy services. Design advice was provided by the UK’s National History Museum and Eden Project.

Nick Sweet, Partner at Barton WIllmore comments, “KAIG is the creation of a new type of sustainable community, designed to be representative of Saudi Arabia’s response to the global challenge of climate change. This project epitomises our desire to marry manmade structures with the natural environment and produce a broader narrative about their complex interrelationships over time.”

Jerry Young, Project Principal and Partner at Buro Happold, comments: “This coveted award is the perfect endorsement for KAIG, given its remit to showcase sustainable development and present scenarios related to climate change and the choices we now need to make.

“The innovative design, which features renewable and low energy technologies, was extremely challenging. Nothing as complex has been built on this scale and in this kind of environment before. The result has been delivered through a truly multi-disciplinary, collaborative and innovative approach.”

Following the completion of the design phase in November 2009, KAIG won the overall global leisure category for commercial property at the International Property Awards. It also won the Cityscape Award for Real Estate in the Middle East & North Africa region in the ‘Best Sustainable Development’ category earlier this year.