Designing PwC's Regional HQ & Upgrading the Digital Experince Centre OS to V2.0
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 Riyadh’s Laysen Valley complex, 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. Having designed PwC’s Digital Experience Centres for more than seven years, 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. The Ether led the experience strategy and design across the major client-facing spaces.
As PwC’s long-standing experience consulting partners, The Ether worked across both PwC’s own environments and the spaces they build for clients; we arrived knowing what Digital Experience Centre 2.0 had to be. The challenge was knowing how to surpass it. In addition, the new DXC (Digital Experience Centre) spanned two floors with no existing connection, both a physical barrier to movement and to the functional 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 DXC. Achieve this and circulation would open up for visitors and employees alike, and link hubs such as The Difference, the Theatre and the Studios.
The central idea was coined around the concept of Embedding, symbolising a two-way relationship between PwC and the Kingdom, where PwC was fully committed to embedding itself within KSA, and KSA was subsequently embedded in the Experience Centre, both figuratively and literally through materials, motifs, and architectural and planning principles. Local flora sat behind glass brick walls, while raked concrete embedded with local rock aided acoustics throughout and became integral to the visual language. Naturally, technology was embedded and woven through the fabric of the space in a way that would future-proof upgrades. Across the floors, we designed a multitude of spaces, each exuding its own unique style, experience offering and character.
PwC unveiled the headquarters in September 2025: 22,400 square metres across eleven floors, now 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. Riyadh does the same job across an entire headquarters.
