Al-Madina Municipality HQ

The headquarters of Al-Madina Municipality, designed by BEEAH Planners, Architects and Engineers and opened in 2004, is built from three materials: dark volcanic stone outside, timber screens at the windows, and deep red brick around a domed atrium inside. For BEEAH, we photographed it from the ground and from the air, by day, at blue hour and after dark.

Client and architect: BEEAH Planners, Architects and Engineers
Services: Architectural photography, Aerial photography
Sector: Architecture
Year: 2026

The building

A broad block around courtyards, crowned by a large white dome with smaller domes at its corners, set back behind lawns and palms. Its plaque records the opening on 5 February 2004. From the air you read the plan; from the street, the stone.

The path across the lawn toward the front and its domes

The domes rising behind a stone facade with rows of arched windows

A palm-lined road between stone wings, leading to the front and its dome

The marble opening plaque in Arabic calligraphy, dated 5 February 2004

A courtyard facade with arched windows and the main dome above

Stone

The walls are dark volcanic stone set in pale mortar, as dark as the lava fields around Madina, banded with smooth courses of light stone. Close up it reads like rough lava; from across the street it settles into a fine grey grain. We shot it in low side light so every stone throws its own shadow.

Arched windows in the dark stone wall behind planting

Volcanic stones set in pale mortar, lit from the side

Timber

Projecting timber window boxes, the rawashin of Hijazi houses, and deep lattice screens break up the stone. They shade the glass, keep the rooms private, and bring a warm colour to a dark wall.

Timber window boxes projecting from the stone facade

Light and shade

Deep arcades and a planted courtyard keep the sun off the walls. Through the day the piers and the lattice draw long bars of shadow across the stone floors.

A planted courtyard with palms seen straight down from the air

Looking down a shaded arcade to its far end

Bars of sun and shadow between the piers

The shadow of a window lattice on a pale wall

Brick

Inside, the palette turns warm. Red brick lines the atrium under the main dome, its lower floors banded white and grey, with timber balconies on every level, rings of lamps, and stained glass set in the drum of the dome.