Al Barari Estate

A villa set into Al Barari's forest

Al Barari is Dubai's rare experiment in living inside a landscape rather than beside one — 100 acres of botanical parkland, lakes and rainforest canopy folded around the villas within it. This commission took that setting as the brief: rooms that open fully to the greenery, natural stone and timber that read as an extension of the garden, and a palette pulled from bark, moss and warm limestone rather than the marble-and-gold vocabulary more common on the coast.

Inside, the plan resolves around long sightlines to the landscape — a double-height living room framed in glazing, a dining room that reads as a garden pavilion, and bedrooms positioned to wake to the canopy rather than the street. Furniture and joinery were specified in textured, matte materials that hold their own against the greenery beyond the glass without competing with it.