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— Studio

Omar Badriek
— a practice on the grid.

— Studio

A practice
between Riyadh
and the Hejaz.

O+ is the independent practice of Omar Badriek — a Saudi architect trained at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah and at Columbia University GSAPP in New York. The studio pairs rigour learned on Riyadh’s largest civic projects with the soft, courtyarded intelligence of Old Jeddah.

Before founding O+, Omar spent six years inside the Riyadh design team at AtkinsRéalis, leading and contributing to projects at every scale of Vision 2030 — from a 400 × 400 × 400 metre cube at New Murabba to two hotels above the King Abdullah Financial District, and the master entertainment grids of Qiddiya.

The work is grounded in research first carried out at Columbia: how does architecture serve communities most exposed to a changing climate? In a city built between mountain, sea, and sun, that question has a daily answer.

— Principles
  1. 01

    Grid as discipline

    Every project begins on a measured grid — structural, urban, social. The grid is the contract between the building, the city, and the body that walks through it.

  2. 02

    Climate first

    Wall, void, shade. Saudi summers do not negotiate. Form is set by orientation, mass, and the path of the sun before it is set by anything else.

  3. 03

    Hejazi memory

    The roshan, the courtyard, the tight alley — Old Jeddah’s architecture is a system, not a style. We design with that system, not against it.

  4. 04

    Plain materials

    Limestone, lime plaster, perforated steel, glass, water. Few materials, deeply understood.

— Process

From brief to building, in five movements.

  1. 01 — Brief

    Site walks, client conversations, climate and zoning study. The project is named.

  2. 02 — Grid

    A structural and urban grid is set. Programme is laid in. The first model is physical.

  3. 03 — Form

    Mass, shade, void. Orientation is locked. Materials are sampled at full scale.

  4. 04 — Detail

    Joints, openings, thresholds. The building is drawn at 1:1 where it meets the body.

  5. 05 — Build

    On site, weekly. The drawing follows the building, not the other way around.

    Drawing follows building
— Start a project

Have a site?
We have a grid.

O+ takes on a small number of projects each year. We work on civic, residential, hospitality, and adaptive-reuse commissions — at any scale, in any phase.

Start a project →
  • studio@oplus.sa
  • +966 12 000 0000
  • Al Rawdah District, Jeddah