A City of Clouds

LAVA’s endeavors revolve around envisioning new horizons within unforgiving environments: Picture Saudi Arabia’s expansive deserts, rugged peaks, relentless winds, and blistering heat. Traditionally, architects confronted these challenges with air-conditioned skyscrapers and sprawling urban expanses on flat terrain, following structured radial or rectilinear growth patterns. Yet, the concept for K.A.CARE, The King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy—a 6,500-hectare development for approximately 80,000 inhabitants near Riyadh—envisions how technology could inspire a new post-oil era in urban design, crafting a cloud-based infrastructure that enhances the lives of those dwelling in extreme climates.

This infrastructure is rooted in providing energy for K.A.CARE, where there is plenty of solar energy, yet water for living and food production is scarce. Following the principle of post-oil age—where the export of renewable energy sustains a cyclic economy based on optimized resource efficiency for water, food, and energy—the roofing of this ‘Cloud City’ is at the core of the city’s functioning. It provides a living laboratory where new technology defines the evolution of further roofing as the city expands.

Based on environmental research, the Cloud exists above a master plan based on the mountainous natural topography, giving rise to a decentralized system that reduces energy consumption and waste by harvesting closer to the source. “Combining learning from ancient cities with data from advanced tools like cloud modeling, the city becomes a flexible spatial structure capable of accommodating continuous growth while maintaining full functionality at the local level, resulting in an adaptive master plan process that anticipates the evolving needs of the cityscape,” explains LAVA Partner Alexander Rieck.

This approach offered numerous advantages, including the potential for an organically evolving polycentric city plan. When it comes to urbanism, mountainous topographies place a higher strain on infrastructure—as it must defy gravity, the movement of sewage and water is highly energy-consuming—a poly-nodal infrastructure mitigates this with resources traveling less distance and altitude. The canyon pathway connecting the nodes forms a central promenade of public buildings, retail, and public landscaped spaces at the bottom, creating a flood plain to collect rainwater which reaches 21 mm of rainfall a day during a storm: “When it rains, it pours,” remarks Rieck. “Leaving the valley’s center unobstructed for water management was crucial, yet concurrently allowed us to designate this land as public space contributing to an elevated urban experience and evolution of the traditional Arab city.”

The comprehensive vision of ‘The City of Clouds’ aimed to transform the urban lifestyle of its inhabitants in the desert through improved outdoor environmental comfort, social connections encouraged by nature and public space, and networked communications that expand the potential of the city as a living laboratory for new technologies and environmentally-conscious settlements. By giving form to the cloud metaphor, the urban methodology flows in tandem with existent ecosystems, emphasizing how nature and technology must pave the way to envision novel metropolitan futures for post-oil societies.

Our book What If (2022, Birkhäuser) features this project.