A re-sculpturing endeavor to the face of the mountain and availing its steep contour, the architect worked on turning this project into a three dimensional extension of the mountain into space, rather than an annex; an approach that demonstrated itself by in the defragmented spread out of the project’s massing and units, and the use of earthy colored materials.The sensitivity towards Makkah as a holy location did not terminate at the physical context acknowledgement, but rather stretched to broader cultural horizons, where the architecture of Makkah's organic slums was adopted into the project as a mean of experiencing the traditional interaction with the steep terrain of the mountain; creating an integrated built environment that is naturally in full scale of belonging and coherence with the place. A dialect that experiences the depth of Makkah's culture and history, rather than conventionally adopting the architecture arches and colonnaded arcades. The grandiose scale of the project added more challenges in terms of the project’s scale and massing; the design called for splitting the two main buildings into 5 smaller blocks, which grew and spread over the common podium that comprised the reception, hyper markets, and shopping arcades. Such approach emphasized on the human scale and resulted in the creation of a thrilling urban experience throughout the negative spaces between the buildings.
