The Desert Agricultural Complex for Topian, NEOM’s food company, is a response to food insecurity caused by climate change. The project focuses on future-proofing food production systems, which are responsible for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.
The 800,000-square-foot research facility is an optimistic vision for the future of food. It consists of state-of-the-art experimental agricultural buildings developed with an international team of experts in farming and alternative modes of food production. The complex is driven by carbon-neutral, net-zero, and climate-resilient strategies that embrace clean solar-powered energy, advanced LED horticultural growth lighting, low-impact cooling, and robotic irrigation and harvesting, to grow food in an environment where its production would otherwise be impossible.
The complex includes a half-million-square-foot primary greenhouse, a vertical farm, a quarantine greenhouse, and a structure with a water-filled membrane roof (that mimics the cooling effect of cloud cover), as well as ancillary energy rooms, cooling towers, and support storage tanks. The buildings are designed to invoke a sense of the future: pure forms disguise their massive scale and innovative function with an aesthetic of robust monumentality and simplicity. They are clad with a palette of unadorned materials to withstand the harsh environment while celebrating the beauty of rocky jebel outcroppings, desert terrain, and waters of the Red Sea. Corten-steel-like painted metal panels, glass, shot-peened reflective aluminum, and accents of engineered white stone panels made of recycled marble dust and high-performance resin complete these structures.
The office building is a circular structure that uses ancient principles of climate-responsive indigenous architecture. The offices are raised one story above the rocky jebel terrain to capture and direct cooling Red Sea winds into the interior planted courtyard and across the rooftop terrace amenity gathering spaces.
