Work / Retail & Mixed-Use
Terraces — Restaurants & Showrooms
A mixed-use retail development on a 6,300 m² Riyadh plot, proposing stepped massing, colonnaded street frontage, and vernacular material cues across two resolved design schemes.
- Location
- Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- Our role
- Architectural designs
- Plot area
- 6,309 m²
- Built-up area
- 16,705 m²
About this project
The design for Terraces was developed across two distinct architectural languages, both responding to the demands of a 16,705 m² mixed-use programme on a generous urban plot. One scheme draws from Najdi building tradition — sand-coloured masonry, vertical wind-tower parapets, chevron-patterned string courses, and a full-length colonnaded arcade at grade that shades the retail frontage and creates a sheltered pedestrian edge.
The alternative scheme takes a contemporary position: flat-topped volumes clad in warm-toned stone panels broken by vertical timber fins and full-height glazed shopfronts. Inset terrace recesses at the upper levels give the building its name and provide shaded outdoor space for restaurant and café tenants — a direct response to Riyadh's climate, where covered, partially open settings extend usable hours across most of the year. Offices occupy the uppermost floor in both proposals, completing the mixed-use stacking.
Pioneer Landmarks led the architectural design across both schemes, developing massing, façade composition, programme distribution, and material palettes for the retail, restaurant, and showroom floors. The two directions together represent a client-facing design process that tests formal register — regional-vernacular against restrained contemporary — against the same brief, site area, and built-up footprint.
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