Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Morne Fourie (B.Arch cum laude, M.Arch) is a Real Estate Design & Development professional specializing in master planning, urban design, concept design & feasibility, historic precinct redevelopment, entertainment destinations, tourism, themed environments, retail and hospitality. He served in senior VP, VP and senior director roles in publicly listed entities and semi-government real estate developers in Saudi & Dubai including a decade with Meraas Holding group companies. He spent the preceding decade in consultancy in Asia and the Middle East, most notably as director of AECOM. He compose development briefs, procure and manage design consultants, design manage GFA, BUA, FAR and budgets. He chairs and is a speaker and panelist at conferences, teaches urban planning at a post-graduate level, participated in the development plan of Dubai 2020 & Dubai vision 2021, and has presented real estate interventions to the rulers of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. He serves on PIF FSC Boards and PIF Advisory Boards. He is a former cum laude student and recipient of the Commonwealth Scholarship and a Master's graduate from McGill University in Montreal. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute, ex Chairman of the Dubai British School Advisory Board, and a founding ex member of DSCP. As an artist, Morné’s work has been exhibited in a gallery in the Alserkal Avenue in Dubai, and is permanently exhibited in the Lapita Marriot Hotel in Dubai.
Advisory Board Member for a confidential new real estate development entity in Makkah Province in Saudi Arabia, developing Red Sea hospitality assets.
Responsible for the design of masterplans, districts and neighborhoods in eight cities and the architectural design of 390,000 residenrial units, thousands of educational facilities, retail, offices, hospitality and other amenities, delivering on the Saudi Arabia 2030 plan.
Dubai Parks and Resorts is a masterplan developed by DPR on the border between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Morne Fourie is the Vice President of design from the inception of Dubai Parks / DXBE out of it's parent company Meraas and is overseeing the design of all the components in the master development, including the 3 parks, the hotels, the RD&E and the public realm components (civil defence, substations, district cooling, public roads, bridges, lakes etc). The destination will become the regions largest integrated theme park resort comprising three separate theme parks and one water park: motiongate™ Dubai, a Hollywood movie inspired theme park; Bollywood Parks™ Dubai; and LEGOLAND® Dubai, the first LEGOLAND® theme park in the Middle East; together with the LEGOLAND® Water Park. It hopes to draw 6.7 million visitors in its first year of operation. The Dh10.4bn theme park was financed in December 2014 by the proceeds of an IPO, a Dh4.2bn bank loan arranged by the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, and capital injections from Meraas.
As the Senior Director of Design of a developer working on a 27 billion dollar project amongst 11 major master plans, Mr. Fourie employed the best consultants from around the globe, leading their design activities. In early 2008, and continuing until 2010, Morné Fourie developed, as Senior Director of Design for Meraas Development, the Jumeirah Gardens master plan with SOM Chicago. The budget was 27 billion dollars to be spent over the life span of the project. The subconsultants included sub-master planners AS&GG, Nikken Sekkei, Gensler & Woods Bagot, Retail by Benoy, Signage by Commarts, Hydrology by Delft, Public Realm by EDAW, infrastructure by Hyder, feasibility by Jones Lang LaSalle, costing by MLC, traffic by MVA, island construction by Nakheel, transit by Systra, canals by Atkins, and project management by WSP. The BUA was 22 million m2 of which 3.5 million is located on a series of 6 new islands planned off the coast of Dubai. The master plan represented a great advance in international urban design theory, and was nominated for presentation at the 2009 ULI conference. It has great LEED credentials, a super structure higher than 828 meters, and an unrivaled public realm with smart boulevards, fully activated ground floor planes, and imbedded passive energy collection and state of the art building technology. The residential population is 270,000 out of a total population of 680,000 people. In 2008/9, Mr. Fourie worked with a group of the best architects in the world, developing Meraas’ portfolio of mixed use office, hotel and residential towers, mostly in the Jumeirah Gardens district of Dubai. The bulk of the work was done utilizing Adrian Smith and SOM as the consultant, but the list also included AEDAS, RMJM, Arquitectonica, SRSS, KPF, Broadway Malyan, BDP, Group 6 and others.