Sand HouseDubai
Sand House, a completed villa in Dubai, the UAE
A completed six-bedroom villa whose pool terrace, covered outdoor rooms and bedrooms open onto one courtyard, photographed at completion.
Sand House is a completed commission in Dubai, the UAE, designed by LKYOOB, an architecture and engineering company in Dubai, registered with Dubai Municipality as KYOOB ENGINEERING CONSULTANCY L.L.C, an Engineering Consultant classified to G+4. Every image on this page is a photograph taken at completion.
What did the brief for Sand House ask for?
The brief runs to 10,200 sq ft of built-up area. Six bedrooms, a family living room, a formal living room, a dining hall, staff accommodation and a laundry and ironing room.
Sand House is planned around its pool. A double-height colonnade shades the terrace along one side of the water, a covered outdoor room with dining in the shade sits at its end, and a timber lounge on strips of lawn faces the pool from the other side, so the cooler months are lived outside in rooms the house shelters.
A bedroom opens through full-height glazing onto the same courtyard, and a passage of lit steps runs along one side of the house. The material language is the studio's: travertine paving and walls, dark timber soffits, and a black slatted screen that closes the far end of the pool against the palms. The photographs on this page were taken at completion; the studio's later visualisation of the house is labelled as one.
The commission: Sand House in Dubai
A six-bedroom house in Dubai with 10,200 sq ft of built-up area, with a family living room as well as a formal one, a dining hall, staff accommodation and a laundry and ironing room. The scope was architecture, interiors and landscape, and the outdoor rooms were drawn with the plan rather than after it.
What Dubai sets
Dubai carries more than one licensing authority on a single unified building permit platform, so the authority that will read a villa file is established for the plot rather than assumed from its address. The studio, registered with Dubai Municipality as an Engineering Consultant classified to G+4, lodges its own application once that is settled, and answers the queries on drawings it made itself.
The climate sets the rest. The cooler months are lived outdoors, so how much shade the pool terrace has, and how many rooms open to it, decide how much of the year the garden is used.
How the house answers it
The pool is the room the house is built around. A double-height colonnade shades the terrace and its loungers along one side; a covered outdoor room at the end holds a dining table in the shade under a dark timber soffit; a timber lounge on strips of lawn faces the water from the other side. A bedroom opens through full-height glazing onto the same courtyard, a black slatted screen closes the far end of the pool against the palms, and a passage of lit steps runs along the side of the house.
Where the project stands
Sand House is built, and the photographs on this page were taken at completion in 2024 by a professional architectural photographer; the one visualisation here is labelled as one. The client's latest project details record the house in Dubai with the area and programme above, beside the studio's design studies Line Villa and Radius House, linked below.
Photographs of Sand House
The Frame
Design studyView project