RIYADH: Raw plywood shelves run from floor to ceiling, low tables hold stacks of new titles, and there is almost no branding. In a city where a venue’s decor can matter as much as what it sells, The Book Department keeps the focus on its shelves.
“The books should speak for themselves,” co-founder Mohammed Alruways told Arab News.
Alruways and Abdullah Kenani opened the independent shop’s permanent space in Diriyah’s JAX District on Nov. 2, stocking more than 1,000 titles on architecture, design and visual culture. They also plan to fund and publish Arabic-language books of their own.
The pair met in 2021 at Saudi artist Ahmed Mater’s studio and now run their own design practice, bytwo.
The idea for a bookshop took shape in Tokyo in 2024. After visiting an exhibition at the Ginza Graphic Gallery, they stopped by a bookshop in the neighboring MMM building.
“We have to do something like this,” Kenani recalled saying. The shop’s initials, TBD, echo the three-letter names of the Tokyo venues.
The collection ranges from architectural theory and criticism to artist monographs, exhibition catalogs, biographies and independent magazines. Many titles cross disciplines. “What Directors Wear,” published by A24, sits somewhere between cinema and fashion, while Reem Kassis’s “The Palestinian Table” is as much a work of cultural history as a cookbook.
A gap to fill
Arabic-language titles make up less than 5 percent of the shop’s stock, but not for lack of interest. The few it has carried sold out within two days, the founders said. The problem is that too few such books are being published.
The TBD Publishing Grant is their attempt to change that. With an initial value of SR200,000 (about $53,300), it will fund an original Arabic-language book on Saudi Arabia’s visual culture. Unlike grants that leave authors to find their own publisher, TBD and bytwo will design, produce and publish the winning book themselves.
Since starting bytwo, the founders have spent years urging local artists and photographers to make their own books. “Now we have a bookshop, we can turn it around and start a grant,” Alruways said.
Applications open on Jan. 29, 2027, and close on June 25, with the first recipient to be announced on the shop’s first anniversary, Nov. 2, 2027. The founders aim to raise the share of Arabic titles on their shelves to at least 30 percent, both by stocking more from other publishers and by publishing their own.
Ten years, ten chairs
The same anniversary will bring the first TBD Chair. Each year, the shop will invite a designer or studio to create a limited-edition chair, linking furniture design to its wider cultural program. The first is being designed by Jeddah-based Third Space Studio.
The idea grew out of the founders’ love of chairs, long a proving ground for architects and designers. Their studio holds about 20, no two alike.
“In 10 years, we will have 10 amazing chairs,” Alruways said.
The commission is also a way to work with the architects and designers whose books fill the shelves, giving them a chance to make something for the shop itself.
Room for a community
Rather than guess what Riyadh wants to read, the founders let their customers show them. The shop stocks a wide range of titles in small numbers and reorders what sells. Film books, initially an afterthought, proved so popular that more are on the way. Visitors’ tastes are now bringing in fashion titles, more cookbooks and more photography.
The shop is also built to gather people. Its book tables are on wheels, so the floor can clear for talks of up to 70 people. A talk with the Saudi Arabia Museum of Contemporary Art, known as SAMoCA, is planned for the end of November, followed by the launch of the latest issue of Naso Art Journal on January 4. Events will be announced on its website and social media, and through the JAX District calendar.
“Saudi’s creative community is growing fast, and it needs places to think, not just make,” the founders said in a statement.
The Book Department is open Monday to Saturday, 3 to 10 p.m.
