El khayyat centre restyling
El khayyat centre restyling
- Architecture
Known and appreciated by everyone for its formal and, at the same time, elegant and refined way of expression, El Khayyat centre still represents nowadays, 25 years after being built, a reference for the architecture in Jeddah. The building is extremely modern both for its shapes and the distribution of the internal spaces, so much that it represents The essence of the concept of "beauty" which is never out of fashion but will last throughout time.
The building has been fully preserved, but it needed some renovation to mantain intact its aesthetical quality, resolve some critical points and increase the prestige of the external spaces.A critical point, easy to identify in an axial organisation scheme like the one in the shopping centre, is the lack of "episodes" or ,better, of connotative places, characterizing the internal space of the gallery.All this is obvious as the visitor is not attracted by any focus point but they are simply inside a, mainly homogeneous, space. For this reason , we chose to focus our design in studying a new flooring with a simple and elegant design. Square blocks in black granite are alternate to blocks in white marble,appropriately shaped, creating some large discs on the floor.
The greenery in the gallery and the trees' compositions have been integrated in the design due to the study of real "functional bloks", where flowers compositions of various colours and furnishing accessories (benches, baskets, small water games) melt together and give life to a distinct object.
One of the most interesting aspects of this project was the re-geometricalization of the top part of the gallery, made of a netted structure. This strucure was realised as a structural support for the new proposed solution.
The chosen solution constitute by an alternation between golden metal strips,decorated with a dotted pattern and acrylic material strips, transmits wealth, luxury and elegance following the criterions of the Arab colture mediated by the Italian architectural culture.
The architectural project represents the perfect synthesis between the architectural contemporary expression and the pre-existing one.
Shapes, materials and technologies used are able to merge innovation and tradition, Arab culture and elegance.
Client: El Khayyat Group
Consultant: INEA