Aspen — New York — Como — Dubai
Internal area
Completed
Status
2026
Completed
3,900
Plot
Location
Emirates Hills, Dubai, UAE
Type
Private villa — new build
Scope
Architecture, interiors, landscape
Palette
Travertine Navona, vein-cut · Unlacquered brass · Backlit onyx · Oiled teak
Overview
A new-build family villa for a household of seven plus staff. The brief asked for total privacy from the street, rooms that stay cool through August, and a house that could host sixty guests without the family ever feeling on display.
The brief
Five suites, majlis, 25 m pool, staff wing, gallery for the client's contemporary collection. Inward-facing plan; no bedroom glass faces the street.
Palette
Case notes
How it
was built.
Five notes from the job — the constraints that shaped the plan, and what the structure, interiors and landscape did about them.
Corner plot with a 4 m fall across its length. Planning required stepped massing and a 6 m landscape setback, which became the arrival court. Foundations on a stiffened raft over compacted dune sand.
Reinforced-concrete frame with 9 m living-room spans; 300 mm travertine rainscreen over insulated blockwork. Roof build-up carries 150 mm of insulation and a full photovoltaic array, hidden behind a stone parapet.
Teak soffits run continuously from inside to out so thresholds disappear. Onyx clads the bar and all five baths, backlit at warm white. Every door over 2.4 m pivots on concealed floor closers.
Two courts — arrival (gravel, single ghaf tree) and water (pool, frangipani). Drip irrigation, native planting, and a greywater loop for the landscape.
Deep reveals and a west-facing blank wall keep peak cooling loads down. Low-temperature radiant floors, heat-recovery ventilation, and solar pre-heat for the pool.
Living hall — travertine, oak and backlit onyx
Timeline
Team
Architecture + interiors
SELA Studio
Executive architect
Local partner, Dubai
Structural engineer
Appointment via tender
Landscape
SELA with local nursery
Project data
