In February, AlUla Artist Residency welcomed Bricklab for one month. Bricklab is an award-winning, Jeddah-based architecture studio co-founded by brothers Abdulrahman and Turki Gazzaz. Their practice probes the boundaries between art, material research, and built environments, merging technical mastery with conceptual rigor and interdisciplinary design. Inviting reflection upon dynamic elements that often go unnoticed, they explore the “gaps between graphics, product design, interiors, and architecture” through innovative investigations of site, object, and user–the component parts of our social and physical worlds. Bricklab creates architecture for cultural uses, visionary master plans, public space interventions, exhibition scenography, and artistic installations in response to the socio-political and economic contexts of their commissions. Their work have been presented in Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, Spoke at world majlis talks, part of Expo 2020, Ithra, Dammam, Audi Innovation judging panel for Dubai Design Week, Award Design for Art Jameel’s Hayy Cinema, Jeddah, IED, Venice, Italy, Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy, Cite des Arts, Paris, France
Bricklab’s team, Aseel Alamoudi, Ghaida Gutub, Zahiyah Alraddadi are saudi architects that have joined at a later stage the AlUla Artist Residency Program in March 2023. Aseel Alamoudi holds a Master of Architecture from SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, USA. She has developed a visual design language which she uses as a tool to create objects of different scales. She experiments with the ontology of her objects in different contexts using digital and physical mediums such as animation and 3D printing. Aseel’s work was exhibited in Raw Print pop-up, Hayy Jameel and Noor Riyadh 2023. Ghaidaa Gutub graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture with Honors from Effat University in 2017, she then went on to take her Master’s Degree in Advanced Architecture from Columbia University in New York; Ghaidaa is a member of the Saudi council of Engineers. Zahiyah Alraddadi graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Effat University in 2019 and is a member of the Saudi council of Engineers. She is a painter at her studio and an expert in 3D modelling and visualizations. She has been shortlisted for the Tamavouz International Awards and has wind the WA Award in 2019.
“Experiments in Rammed Earth” explores the connection between spatial qualities and human perception.
In an attempt to capture the essence of AlUla and its textures through a collection of objects including rocks, sand samples and pigments extracted from natural resources collected from different areas of AlUla,
Bricklab’s team invited the public to a two-part show, first to have an overview of the collected items and a perception of their experience in the city and second for the children to participate and experiment with the natural resources and connect with the texture of the region by making their own rammed earth objects.
The artists and the children revealed the created experiments and showcased the results.
