Watersport Village

RED SEA WATERSPORT VILLAGE
2020-2021
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Site Area 62.800 m², 38 millions USD, 2 storeys
Design: MMArchitectura
Client: Confidential

The Red Sea Watersports Village consists in the complete redesign and rehabilitation of an old and abandoned beach resort located on the northern coastline of Jeddah.

The key elements of the project are: the creation of a in-land water landscape, the theme of the water-sports and related training schools and an organic, biomimetic and sustainable design approach.

Powered by the initiative of a private developer, the Red Sea Watersport Village is composed by the union of three different lots for a total site area of 62.800 square meters.

It features 55 luxury chalets, leisure and water-sport facilities, some of them one-of-its kind in Saudi Arabia, and a strip mall.

The leading idea is to model a sort of water-landscape, by bringing the sea inside the land, that creates elements such as a river, a laguna, a lake, and where each of them can be used as a playground by the users.

In this scenario, the river becomes a canoeing and paddling circuit, the lake a wakeboarding arena and the laguna, still part of the circuit, a new habitat for guests in exclusive hospitality typologies, but also for fishes, birds and native vegetation.

Together with the most common and trendy water related activities, accessible by the public as well as the guests, the Watersport Village offers facilities for new sports not yet present in whole country and introduces for each of them the possibility of training schools for kids and adults.

A sustainable line of action have been planned by maintaining the existing piers, so keeping the coral reef untouched, in the choice and reuse of materials and in a on-site electricity production.

The luxury Red Sea-shell villas, with their wooden structure and canopy shading, follow a biomimetic design and in the same time a sustainable approach by providing a ventilated roof to the building itself, reducing the energy needed for cooling.

The laguna-shell chalets and the river-shell bungalows are conceived on two floors to minimize the footprint on the ground and they are staggered in the plan to respect privacy while shared spaces for socialisation are provided among the clusters.

On the rooftop of the strip mall, located on the opposite side of the main road leading to Jeddah and connected to the Village through a cross-road bridge, will be installed a PV system to reduce the consumption of electricity and the carbon footprint of the new development.