Under the patronage of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Architecture and Design Authority organized last Sunday evening the closing ceremony of the King Salman Urban Charter Award in its first cycle, which is part of the strategy to activate the King Salman Urban Charter initiative, where the shortlisted projects were announced and the winning projects that adopted the methodology and embodied its values were crowned.
In her speech during the ceremony, Dr. Sumaya Al-Sulaiman, CEO of the Architecture and Design Authority, expressed her gratitude and appreciation to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, for their unlimited support to the architecture and design sector, which contributes to achieving the aspirations of the wise leadership to build a promising tomorrow.
She also expressed her sincere gratitude for the unlimited support to the architecture and design sector, which contributes to achieving the aspirations of the wise leadership to build a promising tomorrow. She also extended her sincere thanks and appreciation to His Highness Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan, Minister of Culture and Chairman of the Architecture and Design Authority for his constant support and tireless endeavors to enhance the status of Saudi culture locally and internationally and his endless support for the architecture and design sector."
Dr. Soumaya also expressed her appreciation for the unlimited support for the architecture and design sector. Dr. Sumaya Al-Sulaiman praised all the efforts exerted by the team at the Architecture and Design Authority and the participating committees to make the award a success in its first session. She also announced the periodicity of the award, which will be held every two years, inviting all owners of distinguished urban projects, interested parties and creative students to prepare to participate in it.
The ceremony included a number of paragraphs, including a visual presentation on the King Salman Urban Charter and a presentation of the evaluation stage and its proceedings in which the evaluators tell their experience and feelings towards the projects participating in the award, followed by a speech by the chairman of the jury members, Dr. Adrian Lahoud, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London, followed by the announcement and honor of the winners of the award.
The ceremony was followed by the announcement of the award winners and their honors. After that, the accompanying exhibition was opened, which reviews the important role played by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud - may God protect him - during his administration of the Riyadh region and his vision related to historical depth and pride in the identity of the Kingdom and its spatial and social characteristics to reach the diversity of solutions and urban creativity inspired by the depth of our culture, and the exhibition includes an explanation of the six Charter values and a presentation of the shortlisted projects and winning projects in the tracks of the award, the tour concludes with an interactive virtual experience of the Charter book.
The exhibition also includes an explanation of the six values of the Charter and a presentation of the shortlisted projects and winning projects in the award's tracks. <The shortlist in the final stage included a number of diverse projects from different regions of the Kingdom, and the jury selected 9 of them to be crowned, distributed among the three tracks of the award as follows: For the built projects track, the award went to 5 projects, namely: King Abdulaziz World Cultural Center (Ithra) project in Dhahran, Banyan Tree Resort project in Al-Ula, Dar Al-Rahmaniya project in Al-Ghat governorate, the Grand Mosque project in Kafed in Riyadh, and the Innovation Tower project for King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology in Riyadh. As for the track of non-built projects, the award went to the sports track project in Riyadh, the Mehrab project, which serves all regions of the Kingdom by establishing chapels on travel routes, and for the track of university students' projects, Abdulaziz bin Ghanem Al Talib from King Saud University won with his design proposal for the King Salman Arabic Language Complex project, and Sadeem Al Jabreen from Sheffield University in Britain with her design proposal for the contemporary neighborhood project.
It is worth mentioning It is noteworthy that the journey of the award extended over eight months and passed through four stages, starting from the participation and registration stage, followed by the screening and evaluation stage of the entries according to the announced criteria and conditions, through the technical evaluation by local and international specialists of the projects and then the nomination and arbitration stage for the qualified entries through a jury consisting of a number of experts in the field of architecture and design to determine the winning projects, ending with the closing ceremony and the announcement of the winning projects and celebrating them and crowning them with the Charter Award.
With a final ceremony, the winning projects were announced, celebrated and crowned with the Charter Award.
