Foster + Partners’ architects accused of climate betrayal over new airport in Saudi Arabia

Britain’s largest firm of architects has been accused of hypocrisy by environmentalists after it revealed designs for a second international airport in Saudi Arabia.

Foster + Partners was already working on an airport in the west of the country as part of the “Red Sea Project” to create a luxury resort with 8,000 rooms by 2022. Its new set of designs, apparently inspired by a desert mirage, are for a terminal and control tower to serve the similar, but even more exclusive, Amaala complex on the northwest coast.

Foster + Partners, which has offices in the Abu Dhabi and Dubai, as well as across the globe, was immediately accused of breaching its own promises on climate change by campaigners. The 1,300-strong firm, which is still led by Lord Foster, 85, its founder, was one of the first signatories to the “Architects Declare” manifesto on climate change last year, committing to “evaluating all new projects against the aspiration to contribute positively to mitigating climate breakdown”.

The architecture firm said the terminal would be “akin to a private members club”

However, following the revelation of the new design, Friends of the Earth, the international pressure group, was quick to question the architects’ green credentials. Jamie Peters, Campaigns Director at Friends of the Earth, said: “Concern over damaging climate breakdown shouldn’t know geographical bounds, the last thing the planet needs is new airport capacity for more polluting flights. That goes for Stanstead [which was also designed by Lord Foster, the ] as well as Saudi Arabia.

“Foster + Partners are an internationally known firm who have said we must mitigate climate breakdown, making this proposal all the more apparently hypocritical. It’s not the surrounding landscape they should respond to, but the climate emergency.”

The criticism was echoed by others in the architecture profession. Andrew Waugh, an expert in sustainable design at Waugh Thistleton, added: “It’s hard to think of a worse building to be working on if you care at all about our planet.

“I’d love to see the real evidence of how they believe this project meets the obligations of a signatory of Architects Declare and the promises made to design net zero-carbon buildings. It’s sad to be let down by a company of such standing: they should be leading the world, not helping to finish it off.”

The ultra-exclusive Amaala resort is being built across a 4155 km sq site as part of the government’s ambitious Vision 2030 plan to transform Saudi Arabia’s economy and diversify it away from oil. Whilst the development aspires to be carbon-neutral in operation, the new airport could be used by up to a million passengers a year and is intended to attract ultra-high net worth travellers with the help of climate-controlled hangars for private jets and a ground transfer service from inside the place of arrival. Work is expected to be completed by 2023.

Revealing the design, Gerard Evenden, the Foster + Partners senior executive partner responsible, said the airport would be “akin to a private members club.”

“Responding to the surrounding landscape, the terminal building will form an exclusive gateway to the Amaala resort,” he said.

“The passenger experience through the entire building will be akin to a private members’ club – luxurious and relaxing. Focusing on the themes of art, wellbeing and sport, the design seeks to establish a new model for private terminals that provides a seamless experience from resort to aeroplane.”

Foster + Partners has won several prestigious projects in Saudi Arabia in recent years. The firm completed the kingdom’s first skyscraper, the Al Faisaliah centre, in 2000 and is currently working on the Jabal Omar hotel and apartment complex in Mecca and the Haramain high-speed rail network.

However, Lord Foster stepped down from the advisory board of the government’s Neom project, an ambitious £382 billion scheme to build a fully automated new city on the Red Sea, after the horrific murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the country’s Istanbul consulate in October 2018. The Neom project, which was intended to span the borders of Egypt and Jordan and create an independent trade zone with its own legislation, had been the centrepiece of the Vision 2030 strategy announced in 2016 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler.