Gharfa, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2019

Gharfa stages the intimate relationship between man, landscape, and architecture through the reinterpretation of the human relationship with cultural archetypes. Visitors experience a theatrical world where technique, reality, and illusion intertwine.

Inspired by the local ruins, the experiential pavilion installation presents itself as a large, complex sculpture that sees the collaboration between Edoardo Tresoldi, designer Alberonero, musician Max Magaldi, and garden designer Matteo Foschi for the creation of site-specific installations which use different media to create distinctive spaces in which visitors can meet, rest, and meditate.

By creating a multi-disciplinary environment through the interplay of digital and analog, anthropic and natural, geometric and organic, Gharfa shapes an expressive experience that first shatters and then restores the thin line between collective imagination, individual imagery, and narrative fiction. The theatrical artifices and scenic materials are not hidden but proudly exhibited. Projectors and scaffolding become an integral part of the installation. The result is a narrative of different surfaces, which, in turn, becomes a stage for personal perceptions while highlighting the structure’s backstage anatomy.

Tresoldi places his intervention in the sand, at the exact point where the city ends and the imaginal, illusory space of the desert begins.

Gharfa was realised within the temporary creative project “Diriyah Oasis”, designed and curated by Dubai-based studio Designlab Experience, and located in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. This project, commissioned by the Diriyah Season Committee, is situated in close proximity to the At-Turaif District, a UNESCO World Heritage Site about to undergo a major developmental upgrade.