Delegations were received in that palace, and it was also where the first oil exploration agreement in the Kingdom was inked. The district continued to develop during the reign of King Saud bin Abdulaziz, who built within it a massive palace with lush gardens and a historical gate. Later, after years of negligence, King Faisal bin Abdulaziz established the Islamic Development Bank in the area in a bid to turn the district into a beacon of culture for the Islamic world, according to the then president of the multilateral bank Dr Ahmed Mohammed Ali. This led to another proposal we put forward to highlight Jeddah’s position as the gateway to the Two Holy Mosques. King Abdullah had ordered the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) be headquartered in Jeddah. The initiative was supported by my dear friend Prof Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, who served as the OIC’s secretary general at that time.
King Abdullah was also deeply concerned with the issue of the slums in Jeddah, which were a problem at that time, and worked to address this issue to improve the living conditions of citizens.
With these in mind, we proposed the development of a cultural and commercial space, the crux of which was the rehabilitation of the King Abdulaziz Palace, the creation of an Islamic civilization museum, and the renovation of King Saud ’s palace into an academy for arts and exhibition space. The project end eavored to build a ‘road of Islamic civilizations’ that extends into Jeddah ’s historical district and features commercial buildings, shopping centers, conference centers, and entertainment spaces. One of the most important components of the project was addressing and developing the slums with all the necessary infrastructure, allowing residents to move back at an affordable cost that would be cheaper than relocating them. It also connected them to Jeddah ’s historical district to help revitalize the area and build a road to the Arbaeen Lake and the Jeddah Corniche. The main driver of the project was a desire to breathe life into an area that is central to Jeddah’s modern history, and improve its inhabitants’ quality of life. In this context, I remember th e words of world-renowned architect Alejandro Aravena: “So be it the force of self -construction, the force of common sense, or the force of nature, all these forces need to be translated into form, and what that form is modelling and shaping is not cement , bricks, or wood. It is life itself. Design’s power of synthesis is just an attempt to put at the innermost core of architecture the force of life.”
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