Project Name: Qasr AlHokm Metro Station

Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Design Team: Snøhetta

Total Floor Area: 20,000 m² (station); 20,000 m² plaza and mosque

Completion: 2025

Client: Royal Commission Riyadh City (RCRC)

Design Features:

Project - Snøhetta has completed the Qasr AlHokm Metro Station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a project that redefines what urban infrastructure can be — not merely a transit node, but a civic landmark rooted in history and oriented toward the future. Serving as one of four major hubs within Riyadh's ambitious 85-station metro network, the station connects two primary lines and accommodates up to 3.6 million passengers per day, while its design ambitions extend far beyond capacity.

At the heart of the design is a sweeping stainless-steel canopy clad in 8mm double-curved, mirror-polished panels that acts as an urban periscope, reflecting the city above to those descending below and revealing the subterranean world to those approaching from street level. The supporting steel spaceframe, lightweight yet structurally robust with adjustable tie rods, allows the canopy to extend dramatically beyond its massive cone-wall base, providing shade to the surrounding plaza while channelling natural light deep into the underground levels. Photovoltaic panels mounted atop the canopy contribute to the station's energy production, reinforcing its LEED Gold certification.

Below grade, two glazed platform tubes pierce through a dramatic atrium void, creating a sense of transparency and openness rarely encountered in metro architecture. Descending approximately 35 metres beneath the city, passengers arrive at a temperature-controlled underground garden, irrigated by rainwater collected from the plaza and canopy above, offering rare respite in one of the world's hottest climates. The surrounding terrazzo plaza extends seamlessly to the site boundaries, functioning simultaneously as a civic square, mosque forecourt, and Eid prayer ground. Tradition is woven throughout: atrium walls carry 326 triangular carvings drawn from Najdi architectural motifs, while a 100-metre-long media art wall of 879 acoustic, lighting, and video panels animates the circulation spaces with shifting light and calm visual rhythm.

Qasr AlHokm Metro Station stands as a bold demonstration that public transport infrastructure can honour cultural identity, foster social equity, and elevate everyday urban experience simultaneously.

Design Team - Founded in 1989, Snøhetta is an internationally recognised transdisciplinary design practice headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with regional studios spanning New York, Innsbruck, Paris, Melbourne, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen. The firm operates across architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, product design, and public art, consistently integrating these disciplines into a cohesive and contextually sensitive design methodology.

Under the continued leadership of founding partner Kjetil Trædal Thorsen alongside a globally diverse team of approximately 250 professionals from 40 nations, Snøhetta maintains a non-hierarchical studio culture that prioritises dialogue, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural plurality as central drivers of the design process. The practice first gained international recognition with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, followed by landmark commissions including the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo and the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion in New York City.

Across decades of practice, Snøhetta has sustained a rigorous commitment to environmental sustainability, social equity, and contextual responsiveness at every scale of intervention, from urban masterplanning to material innovation. Recipients of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award, and multiple Dezeen Awards, the firm remains one of the most critically acclaimed and ethically grounded architectural practices in contemporary global discourse. The Qasr AlHokm station, conceived from a competition-winning concept in 2012 and realised over thirteen years of detail design, represents one of the practice's most ambitious and enduring contributions to public infrastructure worldwide.