Art That Shapes Space Futurecity attended the opening of the third Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, In Interludes and Transitions, on 30 January. Co-curated by Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed, this edition brought together more than 65 artists from over 37 countries across JAX's 12,900-square-metre footprint of rehabilitated warehouses and courtyards.

What made it compelling was the relationship between the artworks and the architecture holding them. Formafantasma's scenography treated JAX's industrial bones as material to work with, not cover up – floating textile planes and curved canvases guiding movement without carving the space into conventional galleries.

Public Art, Public Behaviour As a consultancy working with public art, we paid particular attention to the outdoor works — and to how visitors engaged with them. Across the opening weekend these were among the most photographed and most lingered-over pieces in the Biennale, drawing crowds that circled, sat, and returned. Agustina Woodgate's The Source – a series of contemporary public drinking fountains whose circular modules echo the aerial geometry of centre-pivot irrigation – leaves its infrastructure exposed, making visible the systems that make a place habitable. Yussef Agbo-Ola's AGBA — 8 Stone Cave (Olaniyi Studio) draws on the Al-Qatt Al-Asiri geometries practised by women in the Asir region, the flowers worn by Qahtani tribesmen, and the Gulf's traditional ventilation bricks, framing architecture as a carrier of intergenerational memory. George Mahashe's Pavilion Prototype III: Camera Obscura #0Mafadi takes the form of a timber camera obscura – an immersive optical chamber that visitors step inside. Projected images, near and distant, cascade across suspended translucent screens, positioning viewers not as passive observers but as witnesses within a spatial field shaped by light.All three emerged from deep local field research – the kind of work that only gets made when an institution gives artists time and access.

JAX as Cultural Engine The Biennale is the headline, but the wider story is what JAX has become around it. A few years ago this was an industrial estate. It now functions as something closer to a cultural operating system for Riyadh.

The physical regeneration is the least interesting part. What matters is the density and range of programming layered into it: SAMoCA, Saudi Arabia's first contemporary art museum; Beast House, a members' club for music and live events; The Book Department, one of the first art bookstores in the country; the Saudi Artisanal Company; Personage, a concept store for Saudi designers, among others. The institutional layer is thickening in parallel: the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, MDLBEAST XP Music Futures, Noor Riyadh, Hia Hub, PaperBack art book fair – alongside studios of prominent local artists including Ahmed Mater, Muhannad Shono and Ayman Zedani, and art galleries, which together give the district its gravity.

By the afternoon of the Diriyah Biennale public opening day, JAX was crowded with families, elders and international visitors in equal measure – an audience that suggests the district is not just being built for the art world, but by it, for a broader civic purpose.

Heritage and Future Systems Separate from JAX but part of the same strategic picture is Diriyah Art Futures, sited next to the UNESCO World Heritage at-Turaif, and a clear statement of the direction Saudi Arabia is setting for itself: heritage honoured, future prioritised. Across 12,000 square metres it combines studios, exhibition halls, research labs, artist residences, a fabrication lab, immersive lecture spaces, sound and film studios, and a 160-seat Media Theatre for screenings and live performance. It has recently announced an AI-focused art programme.

The current exhibition, Of the Earth: Earthly Technologies to Computational Biologies, curated by Irini Papadimitriou, brings together more than 30 artists to explore how digital systems are reshaping our relationship with the natural world, framing technology as deeply entangled with planetary systems rather than separate from them.

Culture Planned from Day One  JAX is a microcosm of the wider Saudi project: rapid, intentional, and unusually comfortable holding heritage and future in the same hand. It's also representative of a shift across the Gulf at large. Culture here isn't an amenity layered on once a district is complete. It's planned in from the start – shaping the architecture, the programme and the audience from day one.