Desert MajestyAl Manara, Dubai

The commission: Desert Majesty in Al Manara

A villa in Al Manara, Dubai, drawn in travertine around a deep entrance canopy. The studio's scope here was the architecture, and the drawings published are of the street and the approach.

What the site sets

Al Manara is a mainland villa district, so the building permit comes from Dubai Municipality and its Building Control and Building Permits Department, and the studio, registered with the municipality as an Engineering Consultant classified to G+4, lodges its own application. The plots face the street directly and the neighbours are close, so privacy has to come from the elevation rather than from distance.

How the house answers it

The street is given a long travertine wall with palms set into it at intervals, and the entrance is the only opening that shows. A deep timber canopy is pushed out over the door and lit from within, so the way in is obvious without the house being open to the road.

The stone is washed by uplights from the base of the wall. At dusk the elevation reads as bands of light across the travertine rather than as a single flat face, which is what gives the house its scale on a street of similar plots.

Where the project stands

Desert Majesty is a design study: both images are visualisations rendered from the studio's drawings, and neither is a photograph of a built house. The client's schedule enters the house in Al Manara. The rest of the studio's work is on the projects page, linked below.