Gently reimagining tourism in the Middle East by presenting an authentic experience of life in the Saudi heritage site, the new Dar Tantora The House Hotel in AlUla's spellbinding Old Town is a masterstroke of regenerative design.
The meandering alleyways of the Old Town in AlUla will transport you to a different time, when instead of stone and mud brick ruins, a thriving settlement once stood witness to silk, spices and incense being traded between the east and the west. Now, thanks to a unique restoration project, you don't need to close your eyes to imagine this 800-years-old neighbourhood at the height of its influence.
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Under the watch of The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), the organisation entrusted with the environmentally- and historically-sensitive transformation of AlUla, 30 buildings have been faithfully restored as Dar Tantora The House Hotel. “It was a huge responsibility navigating such an environment with its rich layers of histories, reimagining the social, religious and cultural constructs embedded in this labyrinth of ruins,” says Egyptian architect, researcher and AD100 designer Shahira Fahmy. To give you an idea of the monumentality of the task at hand, Fahmy and her team worked on a total footprint of 10,934m2 which is approximately 11% of the area of AlUla Old Town. “Throughout this project, I found myself in a position of learning and dialogue rather than that of expertise.” This suited Fahmy, who embarked on her architectural career as a surveyor, just fine.
“You work like a translator,” she says, “trying to make sure what you interpret is not reductive and what is being conveyed is not lost or embellished.” For Fahmy, authenticity came by way of letting what stood in front be her creative compass: She and her team developed an archive of the settlement, recording every surviving detail, from the window frames and painting techniques, to topography and structural systems, building on RCU’s formidable research, to create the blueprint of how they could make the city liveable again.
“One of the most audible voices in this project is the materiality,” says Fahmy. “Hand-made mud bricks, local stones which for structural reasons were mostly used on the ground floor, palm leaves woven like carpets to form the ceiling, restoring and recreating old pigments – throughout the project we ensured that what we were doing was in keeping with the specificity of the place and how people would have once built and lived here.”
Dealing with heritage sites is a complex balancing act, where context and evidence serve both as source material and a springboard for new ideas that could propel history forward. In addition to collaborating with Egypt-based Environmental Quality International, a consortium specialising in authoring and implementing research-based design solutions, Fahmy brought on board local archaeologists, artist, artisans and craftspeople to give the Old Town a sense of place.
These collaborations transformed historic homes into suites. In keeping with how families lived – the ground floor was for socialising, the first floor for bedrooms and the bathroom – the split-level concept has been retained. The doors (and walls) have been painted in red and blue murals by local artists in styles authentic to the Old Town and just like in olden times, this is a place where candlelight illuminates the night. “We’ve limited electrical points to one outlet per room,” says the designer. The rooms have Wi-Fi, but food is cooked on wood fire.
Dar Tantora The House Hotel gets its name from Tantora square in the Old Town, where an ancient sundial still marks the passage of time. Fahmy’s efforts have written a new chapter in this ancient civilization’s story. househotels.com
