Located in the dense fabric of Jeddah, The Piazza forgoes the urban notion of high-rise towers and obfuscating blocks, seeking instead to recreate harmony with the area’s new residential facet. Penthouses and low-rise buildings, combined with natural breathing spaces, aim to embody an invigorating withdrawal from nowadays imitative development projects. It is contemporary architecture, as it used to be done.

While being an intimate residential area, The Piazza is also an open gate community which favors pedestrians to a great extent and draws people casually through open piazzas and terraces into a gallery of retail outlets.

The compound’s closely-woven pattern of rambling streets, rather than a callous geometric layout, is what truly transforms this elegant neighborhood into the symbiotic relationship between residents and businesses, thus creating a comfortable community, immersed in a cultural and intellectual atmosphere, with activities constantly taking place in the various venues.

The project began with all the right ingredients to become a place where people can live, work and enjoy memorable moments. Eventually, the compound will mature into a space that is much a part of the city’s history as it will be a part of its future.

The Piazza is comprised of a collection of harmonious structures, made up of individual buildings each reflecting its own identity. The site is an almost perfect rectangle and the natural breaks form a route that would thread through the site and connect to the city.

Reciprocally, Jeddah’s urban spirit influenced The Piazza to carry three district layers: a street level of shops, lanes and gardens, a middle layer of well-planned apartments and a top layer of villas and terraces.

The complex has a main public plaza in the center, a series of elevated gardens at the first floor level, and roof gardens at penthouse level.

The terraces are landscaped to create screens, focal points and green canopies, Rooftops carry pergolas to provide green crowns that can be seen from afar. And the vertical layering enriches the experience of both the user and the passerby. The greenery acts as a secluded haven, as well as, a visual feature to main pedestrian routes throughout the site.

Surrounded by a shroud of intricately stacked dwellings, the central courtyard offers a shared park-like escape for a community of families who would take pride in the ownership of their space.

The ease of access into all of the units makes the central courtyard an ideal common gathering area, therefor adding social impact to the compound’s sumptuousness and facilitating its natural cooling through the harsh subtropical arid weather of Jeddah, while the neat urban facades wrapped in wooden shutters and steel frames reaffirm a contemporary residential feel: a perfect modern day solution to an inner city dilemma.

The Piazza is an intimate residential area. It draws its inspiration from the way Mediterranean cities have evolved over time to become places of character, and reinterprets the resulting communal feeling into a modern neighborhood. It favors a relaxed informality to its urbanism, an approach echoed in low-rise buildings, not just displaying affinity to each other, but often connected with bridging terraces.

As anyone living in an elegant neighborhood will attest, it is the organic, synergetic relationship between residents and businesses that created this comfortable community.

The penthouses have expansive roof terraces, with pergola gardens and private pools aiming to create an animated fifth façade. They all have a different finish since they are intended as jewels crowning the main body of the building.

All of the commercial spaces in The Piazza are on the ground floor, created with harmony in mind, to complement the galleries, cafes, restaurants, gift shops and newsstands. The area’s layout, which favors pedestrians to a great extent, draws people casually, through open piazzas and terraces, into a set of retail frames, which incepts in the passerby’s mindset a natural link to sumptuous European cities. 

The Piazza provides the perfect platform for enjoying the outside. The outdoor space is understood as a continuation of the indoor space, and the square is the heart of the project, providing a sense of centrality with its cafes, restaurants and relaxed communal spaces.