Sharaan Nature Reserve, AlUla, Saudi Arabia. The Royal Commission for AlUla commissioned Ateliers Jean Nouvel by competition; the practice records the work as running from 2018 and the project as in construction. The rooms were designed to be cut into sandstone rather than raised on it. The first rock excavation was reported on 26 March 2024. This is the register’s only admitted house that has not opened, and its clearest case of a hotel conceived as subtraction.
The house
Ateliers Jean Nouvel lists the assignment as a competition, the client as the Royal Commission for AlUla, the dates as 2018 to the present and the status as in construction. The programme it records is the resort with an international convention centre and, in the practice’s own French, “deux villas exclusives”, with Hala Warde of HW architecture as partner architect at competition stage and PSM for rock engineering. The designs were published on 27 October 2020 in a release issued with the Royal Commission, describing 40 guest suites, three resort villas, a retreat summit centre of 14 private pavilions nearby, and a resort set to be completed by 2024.
The method is carving. Nouvel’s stated approach is “sculpting within the landscape itself rather than competing with it”, and the precedent cited by client and architect alike is Hegra, Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site: 52 hectares holding more than 100 Nabataean tombs with facades cut into sandstone. Amr AlMadani, then chief executive of the Royal Commission, said of AlUla, “We are a destination built by artists.” The Commission documents the reserve holding the site at 1,540 square kilometres, in AlUla’s Eastern Canyons. On 26 March 2024 the press reported the initial rock excavation. The count given then was 38 suites, and Bouygues Construction was named for the engineering.
What distinguishes it
The commission was won in competition and has run since 2018 Ateliers Jean Nouvel records the type of assignment as a competition and the project dates as 2018 to the present, with the status given as in construction. More than thirty architects, interior architects and landscape, 3D and graphics staff are listed across the competition and concept phases. Six years separate the start of that work from the first excavation of rock.
The hotel was drawn as subtraction, not construction The rooms were designed to be cut into the sandstone rather than built on it, with the excavated volumes stacked one above another and reached from a central lift shaft reported at 80 metres. The entrance was drawn as a circular courtyard carved into the hillside. Nothing in the published scheme stands above the rock line.
The precedent named is a necropolis, not a hotel Client and architect both cite Hegra, the principal southern city of the Nabataean kingdom and Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site: 52 hectares, more than 100 tombs with facades cut into sandstone, about 2,000 years old. The practical argument drawn from it is thermal — Nabataean rock-cut habitats kept “away from the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter”. The register notes that the model is funerary architecture adapted to lodging.
The published room count fell between 2020 and 2024 The Royal Commission’s release of 27 October 2020 gives 40 guest suites and three resort villas, with 14 private pavilions at a retreat summit centre nearby. The reporting of the first excavation in March 2024 gives 38 suites. Neither figure has been withdrawn by its publisher, and the register records both rather than a figure between them.
A completion year was named once and has not been named again The 2020 release said the resort was set to be completed by 2024. When the first rock excavation was reported in March 2024, no completion year was given in its place. The project has therefore passed the only opening date its client ever published.
There is no house here to stay in. No opening date, no rates and no accommodation of any kind have been published, and no guest has slept on the site. What exists is a competition-winning design of 2018, a client, a contractor, a reserve of 1,540 square kilometres and an excavation begun in 2024. Everything written above is a record of intention and of work, not of a hotel in operation.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
People anchored here
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.