Wadi Resort by Oppenheim Architecture + Design

In a worldwide competition for a new luxury destination in Wadi Rum, Jordan, the proposal of Oppenheim Architecture + Design won the first place. Wadi Resort delivers an environmentally sensitive design. Scheduled for completion by 2014, the project comrpende 47 shelters in the desert, ready for future primitive experiences. The development design reinterpretation of how the company coped with the natural advantage of the mystic valley where the desert meets the rock. The project blends quietly with wonderful location, exploiting and enhancing the natural beauty of the desert to build modern house that are elementary and luxurious at the same time. Located dramatically, shelters and villages in their various “incarnations” are in a visceral connection to culture and place. The resulting experience is a revolutionary notion of opulence that is intentionally reduced to essential.

The structure of the shelters will carved into the rock cliffs, using existing geological geometries of the rock to figure out. Other structures compressed earthen and concrete mixed with the local red sandstone. The minimalist but powerful gesture of architecture, built and carved serves to create harmony and balance, framing and amplifying the surroundings. The interior and exterior are deliberately vague, providing maximum impact with minimum effort. Inspired by the primordial, Oppenheim used if expertise in sustainable design to create cross ventilation passive measures, maximizing the effects cooling of the rocks, and positioned to allow the project to minimize its energy consumption and maximize your stay healthy and comfortable .

“We have trained and lifted up our senses to see, smell, taste, hear and touch the mystical beauty of Wadir Rum. We have used the inherent power of the desert through design instinctive movements, formed by the forces, rhythms and patterns of nature, past, present and future. “Oppenheim said about his creative process for the project. The strategies employed are those that have been tested for the past thousands of years. We learned a great deal of civilizations that lived in the beautiful and wonderful desert for millennia. He took great care in the use of local materials and various water conservation considerations for human use and irrigation of land to establish a relatively closed system of collection of rainwater in underground tanks and re-use of greywater / black through a living machine botanical and biological nature. All systems and services will be fully integrated into the design. The 74,300 m2 of architectural forms respond directly to the rich regional signals: an evolutionary process that has been established over millennia, a clear and appropriate identity found in the Middle East.