The shortest distance between 2 points isn’t a straight line

The Line” is the flagship project of NEOM, an urban area presently being built in Saudi Arabia at the Red Sea’s northern tip. The projects stated goal: diversification of the kingdom’s economy and industry which is based almost entirely on the exportation of petroleum. Its founder; Saudi prince Muhammed bin Salman, known as MSB.

While all of us have witnessed the ever increasing scale of building projects, “The Line” is a building on a scale unprecedented in human history – a skyscraper city 34 square kilometers in area, 200 meters wide, 500 meters above sea level, extending across the Saudi Arabian desert to the Red Sea. A single building designed to house 9 million people!

Inside this new global city of the future, a most complex three-dimensional design has been developed with the assistance of A1, geared to tourism, commerce, health and educational facilities as well as urban neighborhoods, all within five minute walking distance. Sustainability based on renewable energy is a major claim. Car free, it will include a rapid rail line, its mirrored external facades tell you there’s almost no way out.

In the final analysis “The Line” is a gargantuan building that forces a large city into a linear envelope, It imposes itself on its residents who of course had no role whatever in its design, its verticality detrimental to social interchange, its claims to fame highly questionable.

Culture, history and memory are important human needs. Significantly “The line” is entirely unrelated to the Saudi way of life which is deeply religious, conservative, traditional and family-oriented, its attitudes and traditions derived from Arab civilization.

Human beings need to make of their homes something of their own. “The Line” is a gilded cage, an over-designed prison, a super modern concentration camp, unfit for human habitation.

Megalomania. Madness.

Gerard Heumann – Architect and Town Planner, Jerusalem