Densifying a hot–humid coastal city means fighting the climate or working with it. Morphing Sands reads Al-Balad's vernacular logic (courtyards, shaded streets, layered façades) as a rule set, then lets solar and wind data resolve it into built form.
Context
IAAC · Barcelona
Year
2026
Stack
Grasshopper · Monoceros / WFC · Environmental analysis
Brief
Featured on the official website of MONOCEROS: https://www.monoceros.tools/project23/
Morphing Sands is a climate-responsive mixed-use architectural system developed for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, addressing urban densification in a hot–humid coastal environment. Inspired by the historic fabric of Al-Balad, the project reinterprets Hijazi principles—such as courtyards, shaded streets, and layered façades—through a modular and computational design approach.
The project organizes commercial functions horizontally at the lower levels and residential units vertically above, forming a courtyard-based typology that promotes social interaction, ventilation, and daylight control. Environmental performance drives the design logic: building orientation, massing, and height are parametrically defined using solar and wind data to maximize shading, cross-ventilation, and thermal comfort.
A rule-based aggregation system using modular pods generates adaptable spatial configurations across different site sizes and densities. Structurally, precast pods integrate load transfer, self-shading, and thermal mass. Combined with passive ventilation and façade-integrated energy strategies, Morphing Sands proposes a scalable architectural system rooted in vernacular intelligence and optimized through computation.
01 · Context
Al-Balad solved a hot–humid coast with courtyards, shaded streets and layered façades. The project treats those as working principles rather than ornament, and asks what they become at the density the city now needs.
02 · System
Orientation, massing and height are parametrically defined from solar and wind data, so shading, cross-ventilation and thermal comfort are settled by the form itself. Commercial functions run horizontally below, residential stacks vertically above, around a courtyard typology.
03 · Aggregation
A rule-based aggregation system assembles modular pods into configurations that adapt across site sizes and densities. Precast pods carry load transfer, self-shading and thermal mass at once, so the structural and environmental arguments are the same argument.
04 · Outcome
The result is a scalable system rather than a single building: passive ventilation and façade-integrated energy strategies combined with a geometry that already knows what its climate asks of it.
