With its expansive scale, King Salman Park is a reconnection destination for ethnicity, culture, nature, and the world.
{"autoplay":"true","autoplay_speed":"8000","speed":"1000","arrows":"true","dots":"false","loop":"true","nav_slide_column":5,"rtl":"false"}
{"autoplay":"true","autoplay_speed":"8000","speed":"1000","arrows":"true","dots":"false","loop":"true","nav_slide_column":5,"rtl":"false"}

DETAILS

LocationRiyadh, Saudi Arabia
ClientKing Salman Park Foundation
Size16.6 sqkm

The largest urban public park ever built, King Salman Park is a defining element of Saudi Vision 2030—an ambitious effort to transform Riyadh into a more livable, sustainable, and globally competitive city. Envisioned as the “Green Lung of Riyadh,” the 16.6-square-kilometer park spans seven times the size of London’s Hyde Park and five times that of New York’s Central Park. Occupying the former Riyadh Air Base, the park dramatically expands the city’s green space.

Designed by a team including SWA, Gerber, MVVA, Buro Happold, and Setec, King Salman Park integrates environmental restoration, innovative infrastructure, and diverse programming at an unprecedented scale. The park includes over 11 square kilometers of green space and more than seven square kilometers of pedestrian pathways, interwoven with cultural, artistic, leisure, and entertainment destinations. Centrally located within the city, the park connects to seven key roadways, while a pair of tunnels, each spanning over two kilometers, run below ground level.

Through an ambitious program of terraforming, soil enhancement, and microclimate creation, the park will be home to more than one million trees across a range of typologies, supported by forest research facilities and sustainable water systems. Native plantings, autonomous transit, naturalistic water features, and extensive public amenities come together to form a model of ecological urban regeneration. King Salman Park is an urban oasis designed to elevate Riyadh’s quality of life and affirm its position as a leading global city.

The project was recognized as the Future Project winner at the 2025 RIBA Middle East Awards, and the first phase is scheduled to open in 2026.

Related Projects

Longgang River Blueway System

The Shenzhen Longgang River Blueway System is envisioned to unlock the tremendous land value of this 13-mile-long suburban watershed and galvanize the city’s future growth. SWA’s proposal addresses urbanization issues pertaining to water, the environment, and open space shortage, while also activating industrial and cultural revitalization in the surrounding d...

Bensonhurst Park

Bensonhurst Park is part of the larger Shore Parkway, an 816.1-acre collection of parks that stretches across Brooklyn and Queens. Today, the site provides a series of pathways, passive seating areas, recreational fields and a playground.
SWA/Balsley created a master plan for the redesign of the north end of the park and final design and construction doc...

Naftzger Park

Naftzger Park offers a contemporary and communal gathering space in downtown Wichita with enough variety to appeal to everyone.  Designed to activate an area of town between Old Town and a burgeoning new entertainment district, the park is at once an urban foyer and outdoor recreation room.  A contemporary pavilion can accommodate picnic tables by day and perf...

Shekou Promenade

A gateway for China’s open-door policy, Shekou has revitalized its fragmented and hazardous coastline into a dynamic six-kilometer promenade that masterfully captures the area’s cultural and natural essence.

The promenade repurposes the disconnected former industrial waterfront into a celebrated open space system with new recreation programs...

Nelson Mandela Park Master Plan

Identified by the City as one of its “Big Five” open space projects, the conceptual master plan for Nelson Mandela Park will create a much-needed central open space for the city’s south district, an industrial area along the waterfront that is home to a growing and increasingly diverse population. Here the city seeks to transcend its current park paradigm of l...

Main Street Garden Park

A key component in the downtown revitalization strategy, Main Street Garden Park required razing two city blocks of buildings and garages to make way for its transformation into a vibrant public space teeming with civic life. This two-acre park fosters downtown residential and commercial growth and was designed to accommodate the needs of residents in adjacent...

Temple City Playgrounds

Ten miles east of Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, Temple City sought to upgrade its aging parks and existing playgrounds into safe and welcoming spaces for community members of all ages. SWA worked with the city to host a community engagement workshop focused on renovating two city playgrounds: Live Oak Park, the city’s largest park, span...

China Beach

China Beach acts as an amphitheater to take in the drama of the San Francisco Golden Gate: the ebb and flow of the wildlife, currents, tides, winds, fog, sun, surf, and marine traffic. Ultimately, this larger landscape and the landscape features of a refreshed beach terrace will be the defining experience for the visitor to China Beach. We are striving to prod...