How Parallel Sea Turned Jeddah Into a Collectible Design Language

Saudi-based design platform Parallel Sea began, as founder Esmaeel Almaimany tells it, with distance. Born and raised in Jeddah, he only understood the depth of his attachment to the city after leaving it for four years. When he eventually returned, the familiarity came back slowly, carrying with it a renewed sense of attention that now shapes the world of Parallel Sea.

What started as a personal outlet has since grown into one of the more visually distinct platforms coming out of Jeddah right now, built around collectible objects, sculptural pieces and a quietly recognisable aesthetic language rooted in the city itself. “It was my way of expressing myself,” Almaimany tells SceneNowSaudi. “A mode of self-expression I couldn’t find anywhere else.”

The name captures the logic of the brand neatly. Founded in 2024, Parallel Sea functions as both title and description, operating on multiple levels at once, and that sense of duality runs through everything Almaimany creates. “I love having two layers of meaning in everything I make,” he explains. “One that lands immediately and one that lingers.” The result is a body of work that feels intentionally difficult to categorise. Somewhere between sculpture, object, and design, the pieces rely more on feeling than explanation.

Jeddah sits at the centre of Parallel Sea’s visual identity, though not in an obvious sense. “I don’t just document the city,” Almaimany says. “I always like to add my own vision to it.” Across the platform, references to Jeddah appear through texture, colour, architecture and atmosphere. The orange tones that recur throughout the work are drawn directly from the city’s sunsets, specifically the final moments before the dusk that stretches a while longer in Jeddah. “It reminds me of my favourite seasons, spring and summer,” he says. “That’s the reason behind Parallel Sea’s striking orange hue.”

The collection itself moves fluidly across mediums. Sculptures remain the foundation, ranging from miniature interpretations of the Corniche’s Seagull Sculpture to the Jeddah Welcomes You landmark, all handcrafted using resin, cement, plaster, and plastic. Elsewhere, Parallel Sea extends into ceramics, jewellery, magnets and clothing, each piece carrying the same balance of nostalgia and contemporary design language.

One of the clearest examples of that balance is Almaimany’s regional cap design, created in response to the dominance of imported iconography. Irked by the ubiquity of Western caps, he designed one centred around Jeddah’s own visual markers: the fountain and the seagull. “I just got so frustrated with seeing them everywhere, because the people couldn’t locate themselves in them,” he states. “I want this symbol to someday carry the same global weight as others.”

That impulse sits at the core of Parallel Sea. The project is not interested in recreating global design trends with a local stamp attached. Instead, it builds its own visual language from regional memory, architecture and shared cultural references, then filters them through experimentation. Some objects begin as one thing and become another entirely. A faulty ceramic cup, for example, eventually found a second life as a vase. “Art, for me, is all about trial and error,” Almaimany says. “As well as reusing and repurposing.”

There is also an intentional openness to the way Parallel Sea evolves. Nothing feels overly fixed or locked into a singular identity. The platform moves comfortably between collectible design object, experimental art project and lifestyle brand without fully settling into one category. Even the process itself remains fluid. Almaimany spends hours mentally constructing a piece before physically making it, often allowing the material to redirect the outcome. “I can lose myself for hours at a time just thinking about how something is going to come together,” he admits.

Despite all his work, he still speaks about the platform with a degree of disbelief. “Honestly, the fact that people actually buy anything from Parallel Sea surprises me,” he laughs. Yet the appeal feels unsurprising once you understand what people are really responding to. Beyond the objects themselves, Parallel Sea offers a way of carrying Jeddah beyond geography. A familiar skyline, a specific shade of sunset, a landmark recognised instantly by the people who grew up around it.

For Almaimany, that emotional connection remains the point of it all. Parallel Sea may eventually expand beyond Jeddah and across the wider region, but its foundation will likely stay the same: creating art that allows people to locate themselves within them.