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King Salman Park

Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

º£½ÇÊÓƵ is playing a central role in the development of King Salman Park, one of Riyadh’s four flagship megaprojects launched by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, in March 2019.

Situated on the site of the city’s former airport, the Park is central to Saudi Vision 2030’s goal of enhancing quality of life, creating a vibrant society, and positioning Riyadh among the world’s most liveable cities.

Many consultants are involved in this long-term vision across the Kingdom, and º£½ÇÊÓƵ is honoured to be working among them, under the leadership of the King Salman Park Foundation (KSPF).

Vision 2030 is a uniquely broad-ranging programme, unrivalled in the world. It is aimed both at diversifying the KSA economy into new areas and to improve the lives of its inhabitants and visitors in multiple ways.

King Salman Park will offer an integrated array of cultural, environmental, recreational, and artistic experiences, becoming a landmark destination for Riyadh.

Spanning 17.2 km² on a former airport site, the Park is seamlessly connected to Riyadh’s major roadways and five Riyadh Metro stations.

Over 1.1 million trees and 20 million plants will be planted, establishing one of the most ambitious urban greening initiatives in the region.

One of the Park’s greatest challenges lies in delivering sustainable irrigation across its expansive terrain, requiring advanced water engineering and reuse strategies.

Challenge

At 17.2km² (6.6 square miles), King Salman Park will be one of the largest urban parks in the world. This is seven times the area of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens combined in London, and five times that of Central Park in Manhattan.

King Salman Park is an entirely new, topographically varied and heavily forested and planted landscape with watercourses, providing shade and coolness. Incorporating a new cultural quarter, it is well served by public transport including the new metro network.

All this is part of a long-planned strategy for the capital city’s sustainable growth which integrates recreation and active travel alongside climatic improvement. The actions of the King Salman Park Foundation, together with other initiatives across the city and its hinterland, are transformational in this regard.

Its largest area is a central circle of parkland, itself over 9.3km² (3.6 square miles) where the previously flat desert terrain has been terraformed into an area of relief topography, with uplands, gorges and streams inspired by the Najdi landscape. It is designed with an integral subsurface irrigation system. The typically two-metre thick soil recipes for the site vary according to the needs of the different zones of planting, all of which is climate-resilient. Given Riyadh’s hot and arid environment, a key technical challenge was ensuring a sustainable irrigation solution for a project of this scale. Our water engineering team led detailed calculations of site-wide demand and identified efficient strategies for non-potable water sourcing, distribution, and storage.

Solution

King Salman Park will be a cultural and recreational landmark for the Kingdom. Working under the leadership of KSPF, º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s multidisciplinary team has delivered detailed design services across core elements of the Park, including infrastructure, urban mobility, water engineering, digital and energy systems, microclimate, fire and life safety, utilities, structural and facade engineering, and sustainability.

The Park’s Visitor Pavilion, inspired by Salmani architecture, will act as an interpretive centre for cultural, environmental, and sustainability themes. Landscaped plazas accommodate festivals, exhibitions, and year-round public programming. A royal 18-hole golf course is planned, and the Park will feature extensive pedestrian and cycling trails, outdoor amphitheatres, and a panoramic skybridge.

New civic buildings have been designed as integral parts of the park. Several of these involve º£½ÇÊÓƵ in the design mix alongside its professional colleagues: the Royal Arts Complex (theatres, museum and much more) by Ricardo Bofill Architecture Studio; Mangera Yvars Architects’ Grand Mosque, two visitor arrival hubs, and Adjaye Associates’ visitor pavilion. 

Beyond the circular 7.2km pedestrian loop, the park assumes an irregular shape and sends out green fingers into the city, between which are areas of property development, much of it residential. Mobility across the site will be enabled by this multi-modal, low-emission transit corridor connecting external parking zones with Park destinations via smart micro-mobility modes.

Our infrastructure and ground engineering teams played a key role in transforming the former airport’s flat terrain into a richly contoured landscape of hills, valleys, and shaded pathways, working closely with KSPF and the wider design team. This included the delivery and planting of over 1.1 million trees and coordination with fire experts to integrate firebreaks and vegetation buffers for risk mitigation.

º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s water engineering team also conducted detailed stormwater and flood risk modelling, while the microclimate team developed a climate-responsive planting strategy to enhance shading, evapotranspiration, and overall user comfort.

Our energy and infrastructure teams oversaw the planning of site-wide power distribution networks, ensuring seamless integration with Riyadh’s future grid. Our public safety specialists developed unobtrusive security strategies, incorporating smart surveillance without compromising the visitor experience. In collaboration with Gerber Architects, º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s building engineers delivered the detailed design for key architectural features including the Museum of the Earth, the Visitor Nursery, underground parking hubs, and a series of sunken and 3D-printed service pavilions housing cafés, retail, and public amenities.

Value

King Salman Park will transform Riyadh’s urban landscape, converting a former airfield into one of the world’s largest public green spaces and creating a living model for sustainable, healthy, and culturally rich city life.

The Park will dramatically increase green coverage in Riyadh, boosting per capita access to nature, improving air quality, mitigating urban heat, and promoting long-term climate resilience.

As the park began to be laid out and planted, with its areas of water appearing, there was soon evidence of increasing biodiversity and natural vegetation spread. While a great deal of water is required for irrigation, that water is recycled from the city’s wastewater and cleaned to the high standard required for successful plant and tree growth. A large nursery area for the planting became an educational resource. The new landscape with its lakes and hollows also has the benefit of being a naturally absorbent medium in the rainy season, part of the city’s overall flood mitigation measures.

Our multidisciplinary expertise has played a pivotal role in delivering on the Park’s bold vision, supporting its contribution to Vision 2030 and ensuring that it becomes a global benchmark for integrated urban park development.