An ascendant wall of steep peaks lining the extensive Red Sea coastline of eastern Saudi Arabia, the Hejaz Mountains are defined by their serrated rock formations and especially deep wadis: secluded river valleys home to pristine ecosystems not found anywhere else on earth. From one of these dramatically enveloped oases—only an hour’s drive from the new Red Sea International Airport but seemingly worlds away—the sprawling 30-thousand square meter (close to a 100-thousand square-foot) Desert Rock Resort incrementally reveals itself from a decidedly unspoiled landscape.
Embedded in the peripheral massifs, cantilevered over steep crevices, and contouring the hidden wadi’s roving desert floor, monumental spaces surface with near-primordial delineation, and colossal scale but with as little ecological impact as possible. The five-star destination is a game changer in many respects.
Developed by Red Sea Global, Desert Rock Resort is a forerunner of the Saudi Vision 2030 mandate; a government program which aims to incentivize economic, social, and cultural diversification all while respecting nature and heritage.
Achieving LEED Gold status, the destination was not only constructed using material extracted on site but also features an innovative water retention and distribution system, alongside other state-of-the-art technologies and operational procedures. Meticulously integrated into the undulating terrain, the different structures are laid-out and illuminated to not obstruct the setting’s sweeping vistas or taint its especially vivid star-ladened and vibrantly moon-lit night time skies.
“There’s a spiritual, almost metaphysical, quality here; a perceptible sensation not experienced elsewhere,” says Paolo Ferrari, principal of the eponymously named practice tasked with the comprehensive interior design of the destination: 64 expansive suites and villas as well as a full offering of public amenity spaces. “With the ambition of enacting an entirely new approach to ultra-luxury and regenerative tourism, we were careful to respect and celebrate this immeasurably singular context with a bold yet sensitive approach. We observed and responded to the strikingly elemental characteristics of the immediate environs while also channeling the region’s entrenched history in artifacts reformulated in varying scales of intervention carried out using reinvigorated local craft traditions.”
Sprawling interiors—many with rock formations breaching the conventional delimitations of indoor and outdoor space—are comprehensively imbued in the prescient amalgamation of site responsivity; the nuanced evocation of the resort’s dynamic architecture extended indoors; and the championing of distinctly Saudi artisanal practices in both material application and the careful distillation of culturally-significant object typologies.
“We designed these environments to recede so that they never overwhelm or detract from the site’s inherent natural beauty,” Ferrari describes. “We did so, in part, by introducing a select palette of site-appropriate mineral-based materials that allow the spaces to reflect their surroundings but not directly mimic them either.” Concrete, plaster, limestone, bronze, and wood—both charred and sandblasted—are implemented in vastly different yet complementary ways: everything from built-in sunken sofas and bespoke luminaires to three-dimensional wall finishing and custom designed sand-cast hardware.
“Even these smallest of often overlooked components are vital as they provide guests with the ability to physically connect with the location and its history,” Ferrari explains. The firm designed roughly 200 unique furnishings and lighting fixtures for the entire project. “Along with the exposed rock face making its way inside at different intervals, the bespoke accents are grounding; eliciting the meditative ritual of finding balance in the immediacy of a given place in time; this one being quite palpable and transcendent.” While sand-cast steel knockers emblazon guest room doors, other sand-cast hardware takes on the refined shape of ancient forms; subtle poetic gestures that connect guests to the visceral qualities of the desert.
They first encounter the sequence of perceivably noncontiguous environments that constitute Desert Rock Resort when reaching the sharply cantilevered rock-topped entrance defined by a dramatic but not overpowering illumination from below. The next emplacement they engage with is the multivalent Guest Hub, commencing with a glasshouse-like lobby framing a rugged rock formation on one side.
This introductory space hints at much of the cohesive design strategy carried out through the rest of the property: the balancing of quiet monumentality with soft application; suggestions of local culture and history; and varied articulations of only a few materials. Breaking up views in three directions are open brickwork walls that bring the exterior architecture indoors. These bold open-structure geometric elements—forming in both an angular and rectilinear pattern—evoke the arabesque tradition of extending the facade of a building with mashrabiyas, projected oriel window loggias enclosed in latticework carefully filtering in natural light and air while also keeping excessive heat out.
Another nod to cultural context and long-established Saudi customs is the large hanging bowl-shaped incense diffuser. Unlike in other cultures where these devices have a more religious function, here they’ve been ritualistically used to signify the entering of one’s home, welcoming in visitors with ablutionary and purifying scents. A subtle nod to this ancient custom, the arrival ritual includes the lighting of incense, marking the arrival of a new guest. The carved limestone front desk is a monolithic, yet distilled, translation of the massive rock formations right outside.
The same limestone was used to clad the walls and protruding columns of the Library Lounge further in the building. These bold and sinuously articulated elements continuously carved in this noble material while ingeniously anchoring oak wood shelving and smoked oak flooring “Here, the softly sculpted material recalls the quality of stone slowly softened by sand and wind over time without losing its integrity,” Ferrari describes. Vitalizing this more intimate space with a sense of grandeur is the open, bronze-clad amoebic-shaped fireplace enveloped in a rib-pattern bronze paneled alcove and leather banquette seating. A strategy prevalent throughout the rest of Desert Rock Resort, furnishings are kept low to emphasize a sense of pervading monumentality and unsubordinated views.
Even more nods to Saudi culture appear in the Basalt restaurant located toward the rear of the Guest Hub. An encaustic concrete tile floor plays host to roughly hewn monolithic features. These include a bespoke haptically textured and weighty limestone shelf—displaying various artifacts—and a sizable pendant lamp reminiscent of a cast iron vessel traditionally utilized in open-air desert cooking. The restaurant is abutted by an open-concept show kitchen fully visible to diners. “In this space, the elemental cue is fire and its rousing of energetic activity, which has been integral to food preparation since ancient times,” Ferrari explains.
Positioned atop a steep slope that rises from the exterior of the wadi-nestled Guest Hub, the Specialty Dining building perches high above the entire campus. The Nyra restaurant is circumscribed with a similar yet divergent theme to Basalt—fire’s transformative and innate force. This wonderfully tenebrous hunt is imbued in a dark yet somewhat iridescent material palette evoking the ephemerality of this basic element, not in the least as it features an open flame josper grill. Volcanic rock is articulated in two notably different modalities: a naturally pitted state for the flooring and an alternation of rough volcanic stone screen wrapping the walls in a perpendicularly stacked pattern. This scheme elicits a primordial approach to structural configuration but is treated with a shrewd degree of contemporaneity.
Other deft formulations of this venue’s underlying concept include furnishings crafted using charred wood. Bronze pendants and floor-mounted lamps that recall the torches of prehistory demarcate the transition from the indoor dining room to the outdoor terrace seamlessly stepped out onto when floor-to-ceiling glass walls are fully unlatched. “These immolators of sorts reflect a sense of timelessness,” Ferrari reflects, “not necessarily within the scope of the recent past but as reinterpreted evocations of the ancient period.” There’s an inherent duality of the ancient and modern woven throughout the project.
A contrasting but equally ancient component within Nyra is the patinated bronze spice display with suspended glass flasks containing various flavors alluding to historical trade routes. From this display, guests select seasonings for the dry aged meat that is prepared cooked directly in-front of the guest. The interplay of juxtaposing forms and textures can also be experienced in the Mica specialty bar found at the other end of a long corridor. Both locales frame dramatic views of rock formations in their immediate vicinity. The latter also features an expansive triangular terrace—replete with a sunken seating area—suspended over the entire resort and looking out over deep mountain; the desert horizons farther afield and especially bright stars above.
When entering the Mica bar, guests feel as though they’re traversing one of the many crevices or caves found elsewhere within the resort. What they’re circumnavigating is the rear of a softly sculpted and amorphously formed bar carved out of a single, massive piece of yellow Riyad limestone. Hand-patinated bronze lining the space refracts in the triangulated waiting pool positioned right outside fully openable glass walls.
“With a cinematic quality defined by sequenced spatial transitions, Mica easily changes from being understated to exuberant based on the scene, mood and time of day,” Ferrari expresses. “It shifts from being meditative to energetic.” This transformative quality is largely achieved through the nuanced dimming and brightening of the embedded ceiling grid of perforated lights.
Best demonstrated in this indirectly diffused scheme, Studio Paolo Ferrari’s comprehensive design of Desert Rock Resort adheres closely to the Dark Sky policy, a US-based environmental organization established to preserve the night skey. The studio administered a set of guidelines in which the illumination of a site doesn't deter from moonlighting casting over the particularly dark night sky, a natural occurrences that can be experienced to strong effect here. “We were very cognizant that no exterior lights have direct beams shining back into the night sky so that guests could fully engage with nature and stargaze without interference,” Ferrari explains.
At the foot of a massif on the opposite side of the valley, the triangulated roof of the oversized Spa is also fully apparent even if the architecture has a certain invisible or camouflaged characteristic. The treatment rooms lining the building's perimeter have a seamless indoor-outdoor flow with covered exterior space giving way to a circuit of naturally formed lagoons. Pools emerge from below geometric, however crevice-like proportioned, shafts in the massif-anchored roof canopy while a more encapsulated hammam is found toward the center of the structure.
A retail space right off the entrance is finished with an appropriately subtle palette of dark wood rendered in open-structure shelving and integrated mirrors. A resort-defining palette of mineral-base materials carries across this entirely reimagined amenity space. “The idea here was to enact the same vision but with serenity and warmth in mind,” Ferrari describes.
Spanning some of the highest points within Desert Rock Resort, the suspended Via ferrata bridge leads to a secluded dining destination overlooking the endless expanse of the site and its surroundings. Like the one to two-bedroom Mountain Crevice Suites—cantilevering over the crevices—and the encapsulated one-bedroom Mountain Cave Suites that illuminate like lanterns during the evening, it illuminates but without detracting from the star and moon glow apparent later in the night.
Strategically positioned, the Mountain Crevice Suites in direct proximity to the mountains as they sling across the voids below. Their interior spatial distributions are directly influenced by natural undulations of rock formations in all directions. There’s little to no disruption of the natural setting’s distinctive delineation. The latter wedge into dedicated hollows with their rough edge apertures covering private outdoor spaces with infinity pools that seem to spill into the valley floor far down below. These cocooned Mountain Cave Suites—carved out of the dense granite mountain—are accessed through a long internal corridor recalling the complex matrix of tunnels crisscrossing ancient archeological site Cappadocia. Here, however, this meandering corridor—a feature not found at any other resort—is elaborately lit by a sequence of custom designed, torch-inspired luminaires and delineated by a long carpet harkening back to Saudi craft traditions.
The 10 suites, both Mountain Crevice and Mountain Cave Suites, are defined by an incredibly visceral interplay of complexly weathered rock faces entropically cutting through hand-troweled plaster walls. “These types of accommodations allow guests to experience the most authentic and elemental qualities of the site, reconnecting them with the earth,” Ferrari describes. While the 53 Wadi Villas and Cliff Hanging Villas—the latter of which situate a bit further up the slope of the surrounding massifs—the palatial Royal Villa embeds within a remote peak and frames sweeping private views over expanse desert and jagged mountain landscapes toward the south.
Regardless of type, each accommodation is imbued in the same cohesive articulation of emphatic, near spiritual site responsivity; soft monumentality; and the dynamic integration of locally entrenched craft but with a slightly more intimate touch.
Floors extending across indoor and outdoor space are finished in concrete and in Crevice Suites, give way to step down seating areas with seamlessly integrated sofas. Other low-slung furnishings render in sandblasted wood, hand wrapped weaving, leather, and linen. Delimiting various areas are naturally woven jute rugs with edge detailing harkening back to the Saudi Al Sadu weaving tradition, recently recognized by UNESCO as one of the country’s most valuable cultural assets. The prowess of this ancient craft is handed down through the generations by Bedouin women who still utilize traditional looms.
Softly contoured yet monolithic cast-concrete bed headboards have an architectonic quality as they also encapsulate sand-blasted wood and stone-topped nightstands. In analogous configurations, seamlessly integrated cast concrete bathtubs play off of sand-blasted and stone-topped vanities with sinks that, yet again, allow guests to viscerally engage the rawness and honesty of mineral formations abundant in the natural setting right outside.
“The wood was better before I carved it,” seminal American Minimalist Carl Andre once expressed. This sentiment carries through the comprehensive interior design of Desert Rock Resort in which Studio Paolo Ferrari deployed monumental elements gently transformed by the human hand but mostly, already shaped by nature; a tangible means for guests to fully immerse themselves in and connect with this unequalled setting. Rooting this both tactile and metaphysical evocation of place, a diverse raft of grand-proportion spaces, is the shrewd yet nuanced introduction of reinterpreted objects and material applications that harken back to ancient times and champions quintessential Saudi craft traditions with subtle inflection.
“Desert Rock Resort is about craft, the handmade, the honesty of materials, and a deep spiritual connection to site,” Ferrari concludes. “It’s about minerality, authenticity, and reconnecting with the most elemental qualities of nature.
