RESIDENTIAl

2023

Typology

Private Residence

Location

Dubai, UAE

Floor Area

1,840 m²

Completion

Q3 2023

Status

Completed

Certification

LEED Platinum

The Lumina Residence is a study in restraint. Commissioned by a family who wanted a home that would "outlast our grandchildren," the brief demanded permanence, ecological integrity, and a spatial language that would feel neither dated nor fashionable — simply, enduringly right.

The clients — a couple with three adult children and a deep commitment to environmental stewardship —
approached Arch Studio with a clear mandate: build a home that performs at net-zero, uses only materials with
verified low-carbon credentials, and creates spaces that feel as generous and alive in fifty years as they do today.

The 1,840m² plot in the Al Barari district of Dubai presented both opportunity and constraint. The desert climate
demanded rigorous passive design to reduce cooling loads; the lush surrounding landscape offered a rare chance to
create a home that felt embedded in nature rather than imposed upon it.

The building is organised around a central courtyard — a device as old as architecture itself, and as relevant as ever in
a hot climate. The courtyard draws cool air through the house via a stack-effect ventilation system, reducing
mechanical cooling demand by an estimated 38%. It also creates a private outdoor room that is shaded for most of
the day, extending the liveable area of the house into the landscape.

The structural system is cross-laminated timber — a choice that sequesters approximately 1 tonne of CO₂ per cubic
metre of material, and that gives the interior spaces a warmth and acoustic quality that concrete and steel cannot
match. The CLT panels were prefabricated in Austria and assembled on-site in eleven days, dramatically reducing
construction waste and site disruption.

The interior palette was developed in close collaboration with the clients over eighteen months of material research.
The guiding principle was that every surface should have a story — a traceable origin, a material logic, a reason to be
exactly what it is rather than a substitute for something else.

Floors are honed Omani limestone, quarried 400km from the site. Walls are a mix of polished micro-cement in warm
sand tones and exposed CLT panels, left unfinished to reveal the grain and texture of the timber. Joinery is solid
walnut, hand-finished by a workshop in Stuttgart that has been supplying Arch Studio for a decade.

The landscape strategy, developed with Leila Osei of Arch's landscape team, treats the 1,840m² plot as a single
ecological system. Native and adapted planting species were selected for their low water demand and their ability
to support local pollinators. A greywater recycling system irrigates the garden using water recovered from the
household's showers and sinks.

The result is a garden that requires no mains water after the first establishment year — an extraordinary achievement
in one of the world's most water-stressed cities.

The Lumina Residence was completed in Q3 2023 and achieved LEED Platinum certification — the first private
residence in the Al Barari district to do so. Post-occupancy monitoring over the first twelve months confirmed that the
building performs within 4% of its modelled energy targets, and produces a 12% annual energy surplus.

The project was awarded the RIBA International Prize for Sustainable Architecture in 2024 and was featured in the
Dezeen Annual as one of the ten most significant residential projects of the year.