In the ancient world, empires were measured by their territorial expansion. In the modern world, by their towers. And in the postmodern world, by their cubes.
Thus was born the Mukaab, a colossal cube 400 meters high, long, and wide—yes, a geometric cube the size of an entire neighborhood—that will be visible from any point in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. A monster of concrete and augmented reality, it doesn’t seek to challenge the sky like the Burj Khalifa, but rather to control the horizon like a digital altar to the god of consumption.
Saudi Arabia isn’t building a building. It’s building a statement. An architectural message to the world: “If oil runs out, we’ll invent another miracle.”
From desert to dystopia
The Mukaab will be the heart of “New Murabba,” a 19-square-kilometer megaproject designed to transform Riyadh into a city of the future. And when I say “future,” I don’t mean what’s coming, but what the regime needs to impose.
Because the future, in this context, isn’t a timeline: it’s a product. It’s packaged, sold, projected on 3D screens inside a cube.
In this cubic delirium, there will be everything: homes, hotels, universities, museums, parks, shopping malls, artificial intelligence, drones, holograms, and—of course—absolute control. Regulated climate, controlled atmosphere, contained freedom. A kind of Disneyland of cool authoritarianism.
Power is no longer measured in barrels.
This project isn’t born of whim. It’s born of panic. Saudi Arabia knows this: its wealth depends on a resource that no longer guarantees the future. Oil has an expiration date, and the Saudis need to reinvent themselves before the West finally shuts down the combustion engine.
The Mukaab isn’t architecture: it’s foreign policy. It’s luxury propaganda. It’s soft power scented with oud.
That’s why it’s financed by the Public Investment Fund, the same one that buys football clubs in Europe, organizes boxing matches in Jeddah, and turns the Dakar Rally into a state-sponsored commercial. The same one that answers to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who doesn’t want to be remembered as the executioner of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but as the architect of the new Middle East.
But why a cube?
Because in Islam, the cube has radical symbolic power. The Kaaba—the holiest site in Islam—is a cube. Millions of Muslims pray there. The Islamic world revolves around it.
The Mukaab, although presented as a “traditional geometric inspiration,” is a symbolic heresy disguised as modernity. It doesn’t seek to compete with the Kaaba, but rather to become its structural antagonist: where one is humble, the other is ostentatious; where one is spiritual, the other is consumerist; where one connects with God, the other simulates God with technology.
And this duplicity is no coincidence: it’s a gesture of power. The crown prince wants to reconfigure the country’s imaginary, from a tribal theocracy to a technocratic monarchy. And for that, he needs new symbols, even if it means rewriting tradition.
The mirage of the futuristic
In the official narrative, the Mukaab will be “the largest built structure in the world,” “the first immersive destination on the planet,” and “a city within a city.” It all sounds wonderful, but behind the imported marble and holographic domes lies a paradox: the kingdom that least respects freedom is building the smartest city.
An elegant dystopia where nothing is missing, except one thing: citizenship.
Because the cube won’t be for everyone. It won’t be for women without guardianship. Nor for the migrant workers who will build it in 50-degree temperatures. Nor for political opponents. Nor for journalists. Nor for the average Saudi citizen.
It will be for luxury tourists, Davos executives, Gulf influencers, and Silicon Valley bureaucrats who will trade the desert for the metaverse.
From the Kaaba to the Mukaab: Mutation or Betrayal?
This architectural leap—from the sacred cube to the augmented reality cube—represents Saudi Arabia’s new dilemma: is it possible to build the future without dynamiting the past?
Because it’s not just about infrastructure, but about identity. Modernization isn’t just technological: it’s cultural, it’s religious, it’s symbolic. And when it’s built too quickly, without debate or memory, what is erected is not a country of the future, but a cardboard cutout in the shape of a cube.
In the 20th century, cathedrals were factories. In the 21st century, they will be shopping malls. And in Saudi Arabia, they will be cubes.
The Mukaab is not an impossible architecture. It is an inevitable architecture. Because when absolute power meets infinite capital and distorted imagination, what is produced is not art, nor urban planning, nor technology: it is spectacle.
A spectacle that needs giant stages to hide its contradictions.
And the worst part is that it probably works.
Saudi Arabia’s cubic delirium: when oil is transformed into monumental geometry
Saudi Arabia wants to build a cube. But not just any cube. The largest on the planet. A colossal volume, 400 meters high, long, and wide, that promises to forever alter the landscape of Riyadh. A cube so colossal that, according to its developers, it will be visible from any point in the city. Thus was born “The Mukaab,” an architectural creation more out of a geopolitical dystopia than an urban planning study.
But let’s not be confused. This isn’t just a construction project: it’s a message. It heralds a new era of Saudi soft power, a post-oil era in which wealth is no longer measured only in barrels, but in delusions of grandeur. Because The Mukaab won’t simply be a building: it will be a city within a building. A hermetic ecosystem with residences, hotels, shopping malls, offices, gardens, and even holograms. A cubic metropolis with an artificial climate, where the sun will be an LED lamp.
The Mukaab is part of “New Murabba,” a mega-urban development project that seeks to transform 19 square kilometers of the Saudi capital into a Blade Runner-style futuristic hub (but with more oil and less acid rain). It is directly driven by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who long ago decided that his country would no longer be just an oil-based theocracy, but also a showcase of tamed modernity.
And therein lies the key: taming modernity. It’s not about opening up to the world, but about designing a tailor-made world, one controlled, curated, and vitrified within a perfect geometry. Because let’s not forget that the cube, in all cultures, is a symbol of order, symmetry, and absolute power. In Saudi Arabia, architecture isn’t decoration: it’s doctrine.
The choice of shape is no coincidence. Saudi Arabia already has a sacred cube: the Kaaba, the center of the Islamic faith. The Mukaab is the modern desecration of that symbol. While the Kaaba represents spiritual orientation, the new cube will be the hub of entertainment, luxury tourism, and hedonistic consumption. An architectural blasphemy? Perhaps. A structural propaganda move? Definitely.
What the Louvre is to Paris, what the Burj Khalifa is to Dubai, the Mukaab aims to be to Riyadh: an icon, a postcard, a projection of power. Only this time, instead of competing with gravity, it competes with scale.
Saudi urban planning has become a branch of its diplomacy. The Cube City, like the futuristic NEOM, is an announcement to the world: Saudi Arabia wants to be the country of the 21st century, even if it means encapsulating it in monumental boxes with perpetual air conditioning.
The numbers are as obscene as the concept: more than 104,000 residences, 9,000 hotel rooms, 80 cultural and commercial spaces, a theater with capacity for tens of thousands. All this with augmented reality technology and holographic projections. Because if the future can’t arrive on its own, Saudi Arabia is building it with petrodollar hammer blows.
As always, the question that lingers is: who will live there? Who will breathe that encapsulated air? Who will be the audience for this architectural spectacle? Probably not the millions of citizens still living under a regime that restricts civil liberties. But investors, luxury tourists, and consultants who write reports with terms like “climate resilience” or “digital ecosystem.”
Perhaps the Mukaab isn’t a city of the future, but rather a science fiction set for a global elite in need of status symbols in the midst of ecological collapse.
The Mukaab isn’t just a building. It’s a mirror. It reflects a world where power is no longer expressed solely through weapons and treaties, but through titanic structures that defy common sense. A world where deserts are conquered not with water, but with air conditioning.
If we ever dreamed of cities of the future, we might not imagine they would be so geometric, so opaque, and so controlled. But they will be: cubic, climate-insulated, and fueled by oil.
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