Miami-based architecture, interior design and planning firm Oppenheim Architecture have released an exciting proposal for the Wadi Rum Desert Resort in Wadi Rum, Jordan.

The proposal includes 47 desert lodges and a resort, with three stories of the six story development carved into the desert rock. 

But is perhaps not as ambitious as it might sound, for a firm that has been awarede over 70 accolades for previous projects spanding across 25 countries. 

Oppenheim describe their design as a place “where desert sand meets desert stone”.

The architects says they have endeavored to reinterpret how we deal with the earth, as well as establishing new luxury benchmarks for sustainable and renewable design in the natural environment. 

They say their proposed design is “earnest and timeless; the architecture is simultaneously powerful, yet comfortable; primitive, yet innovative; casual, yet elegant; raw, yet refined.” 

For them, the resulting experience is aimed at providing a sensual and sensitive experience, "intentionally reduced to what is essential, establishing an ancient connection with the universe through simple, elemental forms, sincere materiality/detailing, and the use of bountiful natural resources both physical and ethereal” on the currently blank site. 

The lodges will be carved into the surrounding sandstone cliffs, thereby using the natural geography of the rocks to create the form and structure of the retreat.

Other structures of the proposed development will be fashioned from native red sand cement and compressed earth, with most of the materials for the structure to be found on-site, and the tents to be made from goat hair.

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