We need to talk about Saudi Arabia

Recent posts on LinkedIn (including those by RIBA chair Jack Pringle and former NLA chief Peter Murray) suggest that working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has become an acceptable norm for UK architects and built environment consultants. While no questions are being asked, plenty of justifications are being offered. So let me address them here.

‘We are designing at the forefront of sustainability’

While the buildings may comply with LEED and BREEAM certification, these accreditation systems are increasingly criticised for their methodology. LEED Platinum airports in the KSA are, for instance, a clear contradiction in terms. Beyond the questionable credibility of these schemes, buildings that claim sustainability often serve as mere band-aids (a term developed by MOULD, the research collective of which I am a member) which fail to cover, let alone heal, the wounds of climate breakdown.

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In KSA, these wounds run exceptionally deep. Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, is the world’s largest oil and gas extractor, and the national budget is heavily dependent on continued extraction and its resulting CO₂ emissions. As Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman declared: ‘We are still going to be the last man standing, and every molecule of hydrocarbon will come out.’ With these resources projected to last another 73 years at current extraction rates, any new KSA building inevitably becomes part of an ongoing campaign of intentional climate breakdown.

The majority of KSA buildings are funded by a regime that is intentionally obstructing developments in climate justice at COP and other forums. For example, at COP 29, KSA was accused of unilaterally editing the main text. In this context, no new building can credibly claim to be ‘sustainable’ – such claims merely serve as surface greenwashing over an entrenched system of environmental destruction.

In addition, any designs will have to mitigate increasingly intolerable temperatures. Saudi Arabia has warmed at a rate 50 per cent higher than the rest of the northern hemisphere’s landmass over the past four decades, and this trend shows no signs of slowing. Buildings designed to combat these temperatures create an ecocidal feedback loop, consuming ever more energy to offset the effects of burning fossil fuels. Moreover, the ongoing urban expansion perpetuates a cycle of endless growth that drives climate breakdown. For all these reasons, no new building in KSA can credibly claim to be sustainable.

‘Our buildings will be an agent for social change’

This argument is commonly made, as exemplified by Stuart Latham, managing partner and senior executive partner at Foster + Partners, who wrote: ‘Saudi Arabia is rapidly opening up to the rest of the world and through our work on these ambitious and innovative projects, we are at the forefront of progress, enabling society to embrace positive change.’

Snøhetta’s Kjetil Trædal Thorsen expressed a similar view, stating about Snøhetta’s KSA projects: ‘You can’t control the future completely but you can provide people with the right tools and, by providing them with the right tools, at least there is an opportunity to move one step ahead.’ Ina Tin, senior adviser and Saudi Arabia expert at Amnesty Norway, dismisses these stances as a blend of naivety and cynicism (in an article well worth reading).

This argument, in all its hubris, misunderstands architecture’s limited agency and influence under an autocratic regime. It perpetuates modernist myths about architecture as the sole driver of social change, casting architects as heroic geniuses who can reshape society at will.

In reality, architecture in KSA serves merely as window-dressing for progress while repressive policies continue unabated underneath. Architecture’s powerlessness to effect social change is further reinforced by developers who control the supply chain, reducing buildings to vessels for capitalist extraction. Any building project thus sits far down the regime’s chain of command; they have far more effective levers to pull to maintain control.

Buildings will do nothing – absolutely nothing – to save the lives of the 198 people executed in the first nine months of 2024. It will not help overturn policies that brutally discriminate against women and LGBTQ+ people. It will not stop the genocidal war in Yemen. And so on.

‘If we pulled out of KSA, someone else would do it anyway’

This follows the same flawed logic as statements like ‘If I stopped flying, planes would take off anyway’ – which misses the point that fewer planes would fly if more people stopped flying. Those working in KSA often implicitly assume that, if they withdrew, less capable designers would take their place, and therefore their continued involvement provides a better service. However, as argued above, no building in KSA can be considered beneficial.

History shows us clear examples, most notably the apartheid regime in South Africa, where boycotts proved to be powerful catalysts for change. Pulling out is the best course of action.

‘We just design the buildings; we don’t build them’

This is the standard get-out clause for architects and consultants to absolve themselves of responsibility for the deadly conditions in KSA construction. The excuse is too often traced back to Zaha Hadid and her infamous ‘I have nothing to do with the workers’, but anyone working in KSA is complicit.

Architects cannot simply look away from the estimated 21,000 deaths and 100,000 missing migrant construction workers who build their designs. They cannot dismiss the brutal conditions and illegal contracts that amount to forced labour, as documented in a complaint to the UN’s International Labour Organization.

Architects cannot ignore the outcry from US Senators, African Trade Unions, and Amnesty International about FIFA’s likely rubber-stamping of the 2036 Football World Cup to KSA. Indeed, it is more likely that architects working in KSA are complicit in what Barney Ronay describes as corporate manslaughter in his brilliant, excoriating article.

Every building in KSA is part of a lethal and exploitative supply chain and architects working there must decide if they are willing to be complicit in this system.

‘We would not work on NEOM’

This claim is often heard from architects working in other parts of KSA, away from the infamous Line and associated projects. It is an argument that attempts to claim moral high ground while demonising the NEOM architects. NEOM is indeed at the pinnacle of social and spatial vileness and no one with any conscience should be working on it, as Kate Wagner has so lucidly expounded in her various articles.

But it is only the tip of a much larger despotic system that oversees all development in KSA. Perhaps NEOM designers are more honest in not even trying to make moral claims and instead just indulging in architectural self-gratification on behalf of their Saudi masters.

‘The RIBA and ARB codes don’t stop us from working in KSA’

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This is true, but only because these codes are so ineffectual. As I argued in Architecture Depends, my hairdresser could meet both codes, yet she isn’t responsible for other people’s lives and the planet’s future, as architects are. The codes are feeble primarily because they focus on defining the architect’s relationship with the client. ‘The architect’s primary responsibility is to the client,’ states the ARB code. When that client is embedded in an autocratic regime, any ethical responsibility is simply washed away.

A more compelling statement emerged from the 2018 RIBA Ethics and Sustainable Development Commission: ‘RIBA Council reasserted the Institute’s unequivocal commitment to placing public interest, social purpose, ethics and sustainable development at the heart of its activities.’

If taken at face value, this declaration should preclude any work in KSA. Yet the ‘unequivocal’ has become decidedly equivocal, as evidenced by 20 RIBA members exhibiting at the 2024 Cityscape Global event in KSA, the world’s largest development event.

Professional conduct follows codified rules, focused not on broader societal obligations but on serving clients and employers. Ethical conduct, however, cannot be reduced to universal rules – it requires individuals to face their specific circumstances and determine what they can morally accept. As Zygmunt Bauman concludes in his Postmodern Ethics: ‘If in doubt, consult your conscience.’

The matter of individual conscience should be at the front of any decision about working in KSA. Anyone working in KSA should inform themselves about the human rights, environmental and political context and then face these conditions from an ethical viewpoint. Architecture does not stand outside these moral conflicts; it is part of them. I applaud the UK practices that have decided on ethical grounds not to work in KSA, and despair of those who try to justify their engagement with spurious arguments.

Jeremy Till is a writer, educator and recovering architect. A version of this article was first published on Substack on Wednesday 11 December.