The Mews
The Mews is a mixed-use development on Riyadh's new Sports Boulevard by FAO Real Estate. At 55,000 square metres of office and retail space, it's not the largest project in the Saudi capital — but it holds a distinction that very few buildings in the region can claim: it's the first development in the Middle East to achieve triple certification across LEED, SmartScore, and WiredScore, all at the highest tiers those systems offer.
Why three certifications, not one
LEED, SmartScore, and WiredScore measure different things, and for a modern Grade-A building trying to attract international tenants you increasingly need all three.
- LEED — energy, water, materials, indoor environmental quality, and the sustainable design fundamentals. This is the baseline that institutional investors and ESG reporting frameworks recognize.
- SmartScore — the global standard for smart buildings, developed by WiredScore. It rates whether a building has the systems, integration, and operational capability to be actually smart — not just marketed as smart. Platinum is the top tier.
- WiredScore — the original certification from the same organization, rating the building's digital connectivity: fibre diversity, carrier redundancy, in-building mobile coverage, and resilience against outages.
The Mews achieved Gold on LEED, Platinum on SmartScore, and Platinum on WiredScore, making it the first project in the Middle East to hold all three at the highest available levels. It also won the 2024 Luxury Lifestyle Award for Best Sustainable Mixed-Use Development — a separate industry recognition.
What triple certification means in practice
A building that certifies across three independent frameworks has to satisfy three different third-party assessors, each with their own review process, documentation requirements, and audit standards. Delivering this consistently requires an integrated approach from day one — you can't bolt SmartScore onto a project after the structural drawings are locked, because the cable pathways and system integrations need to be designed into the core.
The integrative-design approach is exactly what modern sustainability consultancies are built to deliver. It's also why The Mews stands out: most buildings in the region pick one rating system and stop there. Triple certification is a signal to tenants that the developer is not treating sustainability as marketing.
What this means for Riyadh
Riyadh's commercial real estate market is maturing fast under Vision 2030, and the giga-projects (NEOM, Diriyah, The Line) get most of the headlines. But steady, well-executed smaller developments like The Mews are what shift the market floor. When a 55,000 m² mixed-use building sets a new certification benchmark, the next building's tenants start asking why their building doesn't meet the same standards.
The Mews is also on Sports Boulevard — Riyadh's 135-kilometre linear park project — positioning it inside one of the city's flagship public realm investments. The location amplifies the certification story: a high-performance building in a high-performance neighbourhood.
ISG's involvement
ISG supports projects pursuing multi-certification strategies across LEED, Estidama, BREEAM, and smart-building standards. For our specific scope on The Mews engagement, please get in touch.
Related certifications & markets
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