The modern history of Riyadh goes back to the sixteenth century when the town of Muqrin was the most important territory and shaped the city’s early urban fabric. The areas of Muqrin and Ma’kal began to merge from the beginning of the seventeenth century and became what is now Riyadh. The city gained importance in 1740 when Turki bin Abdullah Al-Saud, founder of the Second Saudi State, moved the capital from Diriyah to Riyadh. This decision is seen by many as the beginning of Riyadh as a place of importance (Al-Naim, 2013; Saleh, 1998), though the city’s urban form did not undergo any significant changes.

However, when King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud regained the city in 1902 and established the Third Saudi, Riyadh soon began to spread beyond its traditional territory to an estimated 9 km² in 1917–1918. Alangari (1997) describes the city’s fabric as originating from the Grand Mosque, the Great Souq, and the Royal Palace, all of which were surrounded by an elaborate defensive wall that was constructed out of mud and incorporated nine major gates. As a traditional settlement, Riyadh possessed the same characteristics as other Arab cities, namely, a compact urban fabric, narrow alleyways, and buildings made from local materials. It was not until King Abdulaziz decided in the middle of the twentieth century to build his new palace and administrative building outside the walled city and expand the city’s territory beyond its walls that a new phase of the city began to take shape (Al-Hathloul, 2017).

Over the past decades, Saudi cities have witnessed an unprecedented level of development, because of the revenue of commercialized oil and financial flows that have greatly contributed to the construction of many modern buildings. With the economic and political shifts that occurred since the 1940s, this led to the construction of many governmental and private buildings that contributed significantly to the development of Saudi cities and the evolution of modern architecture.

The discovery of oil in the 1930s led to unprecedented economic growth, leading to urbanization and rapid modernization. This period saw the introduction of concrete and steel, allowing the construction of larger and more durable buildings. The oil boom of the 1970s accelerated this shift, with the development of modern infrastructure including roads, bridges and airports, fundamentally changing the architectural landscape.

In the 1930s, the building of the Al Murabba Historical Palace and its impact on the future of the city of Riyadh, for example, marked a historic transformation and ushered it out of the city wall. Although built with modern materials at the time, this building was able to reflect traditional architecture's ability to adapt and keep pace with the era in which it was built. This project, although it appeared in its composition as a new architectural model, was able to create an architectural and leadership transformation of the city of Riyadh towards the city's expansion and growth. This transformation and growth has persisted since its inception in 1936 when King Abdulaziz decided to build this palace north of Riyadh. This transformation is accompanied by a change in the mental image of the place and its composition for society, in addition to the subsequent interruption of construction with local materials and the adoption of a modern model of construction and construction using bricks and reinforced concrete as well as the development of supportive decisions.

The early 1950s saw city stakeholders begin to modernise the city with the aid of both Arab and foreign architects. King Salman was the Governor of Riyadh for 48 years from 1963 to 2011. Political decisions undoubtedly play a prominent role in driving the development and growth of the mid-1950s city of Riyadh. The decision to move ministries from Jeddah and Mecca to Riyadh (from 1975 onwards) and to order the construction of ministries' headquarters on the Airport Road, designed by Egyptian architect Syed Kari, is one of the most prominent decisions that contributed to the presence of modern architecture in Saudi Arabia.

This was immediately followed by the appearance of the Malaz neighbourhood with which the city began, and the network chart shows the features of the modern city in Riyadh and the repetition of the news experience planned to accommodate Aramco's staff. The railway project, which linked Riyadh to the oil producing Eastern Region, also supported the city's growth and development and provided it with construction materials from the Eastern Region, which had begun to develop since oil exploration and research operations in the 1930s. The railway linking Riyadh to the eastern region, which was completed in 1951 at a cost of $70 million, is one of the Kingdom's first and largest transport projects at the time. Furthermore, a network of paved roads was built to connect the Kingdom's cities and achieved remarkable growth by the beginning of the 1960s. These government-funded projects served the needs of the middle class, which was growing rapidly as a result of the oil economy. Arguably, the impact of the recent growth of Saudi cities began with the planning of Khobar City and Dahran by Aramco, both located on the Arabian Gulf.

The rise in oil prices in the 1970s coincided with an uncharacteristic construction boom in many Saudi cities. Many distinct architectural models were introduced to produce modern architecture derived from local urban identity, although the urban products introduced in the past decades differed due to the foreign and local experiences they designed. As foreign expertise in building design was not entirely relied upon, local expertise was involved in subsequent periods, which produced models that called for traditional architecture and overshadowed their composition in a strong way from a direct historical and visual point of view that clearly expressed the place's cultural affiliation despite the strong variation in many distinct buildings.

We find that Saudi Arabia has become receptive to modern architecture and its applications. A water tower in Riyadh, which opened in 1971, was chosen as an unusual engineering form for Saudi Arabia by the Swedish national project engineer Sune Lindström. His previous experience in the construction of the water tower in the city of Orior in Sweden has been utilized. The Riyadh Water Tower combines developmental value with recreational tourism value and provided recreational services through its surrounding garden and restaurant in its conical part. It was also associated with spatial memory and contributed to its enhancement as a distinct architectural vocabulary in the city's skyline.

The 1980s saw a large influx of modern architectural materials and techniques into Saudi Arabia. Glass, aluminium and prefabricated components have become widely used, allowing for more innovative and complex designs. This era also saw the emergence of popular skyscrapers and malls, reflecting the country's growing economic prowess and ambition to position itself as a global player. The integration of these materials not only enhanced the aesthetic appearance of the buildings, but also improved their functionality and efficiency.

The architect Minro Yamasaki designed the Saudi Monetary Authority building in Riyadh to showcase contemporary concepts associated with the surrounding environment and culture. The same approach was taken in the General Presidency for Youth Welfare building in Riyadh, distinguished by vertical shading elements stretching across the concrete facades. Buildings in the 1980s were characterized by the collection of a combination of architectural concepts such as indoor orientation, the existence of an indoor courtyard, narrow openings in external walls as a kind of handling of the local environment and trying to deal with hot sunlight in Saudi Arabia, as well as vertical shading elements extending on concrete facades in many of them to contribute to the introduction of lighting and the reduction of indoor heat.

Local cultural interest and the desire to create architecture that represents the local context rather than the context behind the attempts called for global architectural simulations were reflected in the 1980s and created large and distinctive projects that contributed to the formation of the local architectural context. This period created for us the development of the Qasr al-Hakam area in the mid-1980s as well as the central area of the Diplomatic Quarter and the Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah to paint and build a local cultural image of the city.

As a result of the launch of Vision 2030, the Kingdom has been transformed from modernity to hyper-modernity and a new era of architecture and urbanism has begun that emphasises the future and innovation. Riyadh of the future will be built upon design and architecture that respects the local culture, meets the social needs of residents, reduces environmental impact, and embraces sustainability. Numerous upcoming projects, like the King Salman Park, Green Riyadh, the Sports Boulevard, the Qiddiya, and the Al-Murabba, aim to improve Riyadh's standing in the world's livability rankings and improve it for its nearly 8 million inhabitants a much more livable city.