Al Balad gives history a future on the Red Sea coast

Saudi Arabia’s cultural, commercial and architectural evolutions are responses to a projected significant fall in demand for petroleum across the next 20 years. But there are at least two other equally important factors: the co-existence of modernising ideas alongside the conservative precepts of the country’s prevailing Wahhabi strand of Islamic faith, and the fact that more than two-thirds of Saudis are under 30.

In a 2021 interview, five years after the launch of the Vision 2030 programme to diversify the economy and widen relationships with the world, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said: ‘If your identity cannot withstand the diversity of the world, it means your identity is weak and you need to do without it. And if your identity is robust and authentic and you can grow and develop it, and promote its positive sides, then you will have preserved and strengthened your identity.’

Until about 50 years ago the perceived identity and cultural value of Saudi Arabia’s historic structures was less than strong – indeed, a Ministry of Culture was not established until 2018. Over time, many historic buildings were lost, not least Hejazi architecture on the west coast, and most importantly, in Jeddah.  

The city’s 500-year-old historic core, Al Balad, has become one of Vision 2030’s headline projects, and here an Allies and Morrison-led masterplan is introducing new approaches to restoration, housing, cultural continuity and cosmopolitan, tourist-friendly additions. The strategic intention is to return Al Balad to something like its original historical status as the focal point of Red Sea heritage and culture, and make it an international hotspot for business and creative activities. 

Until the early 20th century, Al Balad was walled, densely mercantile, and culturally diverse. Its original core and immediate, more modern environs cover 250ha, and a tranche of the oldest fabric was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014. It’s the most important historic urban tableau on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast – a heritage asset damaged by mid-century land reclamations, ruptures of historic townscape, and major road schemes which accelerated the exodus of prosperous traders and merchants in the 1970s. That, in turn, led to further decay of the structurally delicate coral stone tower houses with their wooden bracing and roshan projecting windows, some dating back to the 16th century.

Allies and Morrison’s proposals lie across the palimpsests of the earliest masterplans by Dr Abdul Rahman Makhlof (1962), RMJM (1973) and Sert Jackson (1980). RMJM had been the first to identify specific historic buildings worth preserving. The new masterplan is multi-layered in its social, commercial and heritage-led intentions and is unique to Allies and Morrison in terms of scale, context, and the mix of interventions, according to partner Simon Gathercole. 

The practice’s involvement in Msheireb Downtown Doha in Qatar, delivered between 2006 and 2020, covered 31ha on sites where most of the remaining fabric was less historically remarkable by comparison. The 100-plus new commercial and civic buildings there followed the practice’s design guidelines for a distinct, historically accented ‘Qatari Modern’ architecture. 

‘At its most granular,’ says Gathercole, ‘Al Balad Regeneration Plan is about infill and conservation and, even more, care and attention to the public realm. It’s an organic masterplan, to lead to catalytic growth – not the other way around. There’s been a massive evolutionary process between our team and that of the client.

‘It’s one of those projects that has been very satisfying because we’ve worked with the Jeddah Historic District [organisation] from the start,’ he adds, ‘and they’ve developed quite strong views on what they want to do. Their engagement with shopkeepers and traders is important. The planning has been both bottom-up and top-down.’   

The main thrusts of the masterplan include prioritising the restoration of more than 600 historic buildings; the stitching together of denuded urban fabric; the reconnection of Al Balad to its original port; the development of 20 connected mixed-use clusters; new housing and mixed-use developments on the northern and southern edges of the harbour lagoon; and the creation of a landscaped Allegiance Square and parkland on the site of a massive roundabout and carpark at the northern approach to Al Balad.  

Among the most visually obvious changes to the ground plane will be 16ha of  ‘greened’ public realm spaces and connections, reactivated incidental spaces, and the recasting of urban scar tissue created by three busy north-south roads. This will include the removal of Hael Road and the morphing of Al Dahab Street and King Abdulaziz Road from wide traffic arteries into landscaped, pedestrian-friendly domains. 

Jeddah’s original harbour area, the entry point for hundreds of millions of Mecca-bound pilgrims over the centuries, is already being reinstated to ensure that the sea is directly connected to the historic port, Al Bunt, the beginning of the original main pilgrim route through Al Balad to the Bab Makkah – the Mecca Gate – at its eastern edge. A new Culture Square at the northern edge of the lagoon, with a new park on its south-west edge, is scheduled to open this December, hosting events such as the Red Sea Film Festival.

Renovation of the hundreds of roshan-fronted buildings – mostly built between the 18th and late-19th century – started several years ago with the conversion of three of the most impressive structures into boutique hotels. ‘What makes heritage buildings remarkable is the way in which the roshans capture the north-west winds and harness their cooling effect,’ explains Allies and Morrison director, Emad Sleiby. ‘The coral stone structures can only have minimal loading, so they were braced with wood, which has to be maintained and replaced cyclically.’

We might contrast the contextual sensitivity of Sleiby’s description with Le Corbusier’s hideously pompous, architect-as-God declamation about his Plan Obus for another Islam-infused city, Algiers, in 1931: ‘Here is the new Algiers. Instead of the leprous sore which had sullied the gulf and the slopes of the Sael, here stands architecture . . . the masterly, correct and magnificent play of shapes in the light.’ In the souks, zuqaq lanes and baraha spaces of Al Balad, William Morris’ remark in an 1889 speech strikes a more telling note. ‘All history,’ he said, ‘is perpetual change’ – and it must never be pursued ‘with a vengeance’ against what exists. 

Jay Merrick is a critic, novelist and architecture correspondent for The Independent newspaper