PwC KSA:
HQ & Digital
Experience
Centre 2.0

Designing PwC's regional HQ & upgrading the digital experience centre OS to V2.0

PwC's Riyadh headquarters and its digital experience centre 2.0

PwC KSA is PwC Middle East’s regional headquarters in Laysen Valley, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a hospitality-led tower with the PwC Academy, collaborative working floors and the second edition of PwC’s Digital Experience Centre. We led the experience strategy and design across the major client-facing spaces. The new Digital Experience Centre in Riyadh spans two floors joined by a hero staircase, linking The Difference, the Theatre and the Studios, with raked concrete, local rock and local flora behind glass brick walls.

About the Project

PwC Middle East was moving its regional headquarters to Riyadh and needed a building that reflected the weight of that commitment. The project comprised a new tower in Laysen Valley, Riyadh, accommodating the PwC Academy, collaborative working floors, a café and wellbeing facilities, planned as a hospitality-led destination and achieving LEED Gold in the process. At its centre would sit the second edition of PwC’s Digital Experience Centre. Our founder designed PwC’s Digital Experience Centre in Dubai at a practice he owned and led before The Ether, so we came to Laysen Valley knowing what was required. The opportunity was knowing how to exceed it and update PwC’s Experiential-OS to version 2.0 across two floors. We led the experience strategy and design across the major client-facing spaces of PwC’s Riyadh headquarters.

The Challenge & Opportunity

As PwC’s long-standing experience partners, we work across both PwC’s own environments and the spaces it builds for clients, so we arrived knowing what Digital Experience Centre 2.0 had to be. The challenge was knowing how to surpass it. The new Digital Experience Centre in Riyadh also spanned two floors with no existing connection, a barrier both to movement and to the collaboration the Centre existed to produce. We decided to puncture the slabs between the ground and second floors and make the resulting staircase a hero moment in the journey: a striking first touchpoint carrying visitors through dedicated security gates up into the heart of the Centre. Achieve this and circulation would open up for visitors and employees alike, linking hubs such as The Difference, the Theatre and the Studios.

The Solution

The central idea was Embedding, a two-way relationship in which PwC committed to embedding itself within the Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia was embedded in the Experience Centre through its materials, motifs and planning. Local flora sits behind glass brick walls, while raked concrete embedded with local rock aids acoustics throughout and became integral to the visual language. Technology is woven through the fabric of the space so that it can be upgraded without rebuilding the rooms around it. Across both floors, from the hero staircase to The Difference, the Theatre and the Studios, each space has its own character and experience offering, designed for the workshops, co-creation sessions and client visits the headquarters now hosts.

The Results

PwC unveiled its Riyadh headquarters in September 2025, describing it as 22,400 square metres across eleven floors and home to the Regional Headquarters licence the firm formalised with the Kingdom in 2023. PwC calls the Experience Centre the largest in the Middle East and has named it ElDar Darak, our home is yours, which is the hospitality reading of the idea we set out to embed. The firm describes it as a community space where clients, government and partners co-create solutions and test prototypes, which is the working room we designed it to be. The Dubai Experience Centre changed how PwC’s clients saw the firm, and the Digital Experience Centre in Riyadh does the same job across an entire headquarters.