That Saudi Arabia is racing towards an ambitious, unprecedented future is no secret. They are doing the unthinkable and achieving the far-fetched. From creating a horizontal skyscraper that’s 170 km long, to the world’s first “vertical ski village,” the word impossible doesn’t exist in their dictionary. Speaking of the latter, Neom’s Trojena Ski Village is GCC’s first-ever outdoor ski resort, designed by Aedas. The design firm delivered on the simple brief to create something that’s never been seen before, and Trojena delivers a disruptive new paradigm for ski village typology.
“For millennia, ski villages have had the same formula with multiple plots and buildings connected by roads. We challenged this convention by asking what if the village could be a building. This led us to dream up a superstructure that has the scale of a village but with all the connections and mobility happening vertically across several levels,” Aedas Middle East Global Design Principal Ignacio Gomez explained. The $500 billion gigaproject will feature it all from year-round skiing with 36 kilometers of snow, retail stores, restaurants, luxury mansions, apartments, and luxury hotels.
The development will be divided into five major zones connected through the roof and ground floor. In the next five years, it will accommodate 700,000 visitors and be home to as many as 7,000 residents.
Trojena will allow visitors to make the most of real snow for three months thanks to its breathtaking location near the Sarawat Mountains in Neom, and then make do with fantastic dry synthetic snow (made using one of the most advanced snowmaking systems in the world) for the rest of the calendar. ‘Our foremost consideration was to create a structure that would blend with the terrain.
It has a monumental scale that reads as topography and feels as if it is born from the ground. With the passage of time, the building will age and acquire a patina. We imagine a future when it will become part of the mountain, completely camouflaged by snow,’ Ignacio stated. With an opening date set in 2026, Trojena has something for everyone, even those with no interest in skiing. The man-made 2.8-kilometer-long lake will be the largest freshwater lake in the region with exciting water sports.
Keeping in sync with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s sustainability vision, all the water for the man-made lake and energy for the futuristic ski resort in the desert will be generated sustainably.
The lake is where guests will find two beautiful luxury hotel properties from Marriott International, Inc.- Saudi Arabia’s first W Hotel and a JW Marriott property, in addition to Chedi Trojena. There will also be a Water Village with fine-dining options and housing sitting pretty at the edge of The Lake, per Timeout.
Trojena will be hosting the 2029 Asian Winter Games –
In doing so, the Kingdom became the first West Asian country to host the Asian Winter Games. At Trojena, the average temperature is about 10 degrees Celsius cooler than other cities in Saudi Arabia, and a chilly 0 degrees in the winter. With 3,600 hotel rooms and 2,200 homes, Trojena will be well-equipped to host the 9th edition of the games welcoming participants from over 32 countries.
