Home: Qurtubah Riyadh

An embroidered floor plan of the apartment inhabited in Riyadh since 2021: a home being learned rather than one left behind. Made by the same three-stage method as its pair. The palette is sandy, the tones of Riyadh's built fabric. The emphasis is on openings: doors, windows, sightlines toward the outside. Archway London records enclosure. Qurtubah opens outward.

I made this using the same method as Archway London: drawn freehand in the space, transferred to calico, stitched in the room.

The difference is in what I paid attention to. Archway London was a home I knew completely, a room I was about to leave. Here I was still learning the space. The Qurtubah plan draws toward the outside: the doors and windows that create sightlines, the thresholds that organise a Saudi apartment around the logic of privacy and approach.

The colours are sandy: the pale tones of the city outside, the dust, the light. The compound green marks the outdoor areas, where the sightlines reach.

The corner sofa and the chess table are set centrally. We were still forming our habits. Archway London asked what I knew about a place that was gone. This one asks what I'm learning about a place I'm still in.

One half of a diptych with Home: Archway London.