The bustling, hyper-modern landscape of Dubai Design Week recently played host to a subtle yet powerful architectural intervention, one that deliberately turned away from the glass and steel towers defining the city’s skyline. Titled When Does a Threshold Become a Courtyard?, this compelling pavilion by Emirati studio Some Kind of Practice offered a deep, contextual meditation on the architectural vernacular of the United Arab Emirates. Studio founders Omar Darwish and Abdulla Abbas utilized a striking juxtaposition of materials—ancient palm fronds (arish) and stacked, contemporary concrete blocks—to frame a central, climate-responsive gathering space. Far more than a temporary exhibit, the rectilinear installation served as a tactile research project, examining how the traditional courtyard, historically shaped by community and harsh environmental demands, can be reimagined through readily available resources. By intentionally merging the past and present, the design successfully created a cool, inviting refuge that forces visitors to confront the very definition of regional heritage and sustainable, climate-appropriate construction.
The Historical Echo in Modern Form
The installation’s provocative title, When Does a Threshold Become a Courtyard?, immediately signals the conceptual depth of the structure. It suggests that the essence of the courtyard lies not merely in its geometric enclosure—four walls and an open sky—but in its function as a vital, lived space that mediates between the public and private, the intense heat and the sheltered cool. The architects, Darwish and Abbas, embarked on extensive research across the UAE, delving into the historical, material, and spatial evolution of the region’s architecture. Their goal was to move beyond simple formal mimicry and to understand the courtyard contextually: as a climatic necessity and a social nucleus that shaped neighborhoods and family life for centuries.
This commitment to contextual authenticity transforms the installation from a piece of display art into a narrative object. The final design, placed amid the contemporary high-design atmosphere of the Dubai Design District, acts as a physical counterpoint, asserting the enduring relevance of local history. It is a deliberate slow-down, an invitation to reflect on the architectural choices that pre-date the country’s oil boom and the subsequent reliance on imported, energy-intensive building methods. The resulting pavilion is a contemporary reinterpretation that uses the past as a critical lens to assess current building practices, arguing that true innovation lies in re-engaging with time-tested solutions for the local environment. The simple, rectilinear form thus becomes a powerful vessel for carrying complex historical and cultural memory.
The core of the studio’s philosophy is the belief that architecture should evolve from the region, not just in it. By focusing on how boundaries and enclosures—thresholds—coalesce to form a communal core—a courtyard—they are exploring the social dynamics embedded in spatial design. This approach champions a kind of architectural honesty, where form follows not fashion, but the inherent needs of the climate and the enduring patterns of local social interaction. The project subtly challenges the local industry to look inward, promoting a design language that is both universally contemporary in its structure and deeply rooted in its material story.
Material Dialogues: From Arish to Concrete
The material palette of the installation is perhaps its most compelling feature, staging a direct dialogue between the indigenous and the imported, the temporary and the permanent. The walls are constructed using a striking combination of traditional palm fronds, known as arish, layered atop a simple wooden frame, interspersed with walls of stacked concrete blocks. This juxtaposition is far from arbitrary; it is a meticulously calculated historical commentary. The arish represents the original, sustainable, and readily available material used for centuries to build temporary shade structures and basic dwellings, perfectly suited to the desert climate’s demands for shade and breathability.
The inclusion of stacked concrete blocks, however, introduces a pivotal moment in the country’s architectural history. As Abbas explained, the blocks were chosen as an homage to the stacked stone used historically in the UAE’s mountainous regions to form boundary walls. Yet, by substituting stone with concrete blocks, the architects reference the seismic shift that occurred in the 1960s when imported concrete fundamentally altered local construction practices. The arrival of this modern material, often imported from places like Japan, led to the widespread abandonment of indigenous materials and building techniques. The design intentionally uses the commonplace, “off-the-shelf” concrete block—a symbol of modern ubiquity—to construct the framework of a traditional space, forcing a confrontation between heritage materials and their modern, industrial successors.
Furthermore, the stacking method for the concrete blocks is a deliberate aesthetic and functional choice. Unlike mortared walls, the stacked, unbonded blocks recall the pre-industrial tradition of relying on mass and friction for stability, connecting the modern material back to the vernacular technique of piling stone. The overall effect is a textural richness that is inherently regional, showcasing materials that are both locally sourced (palm fronds) and locally ubiquitous (concrete blocks). This material story emphasizes that heritage is not static; it is a continuous evolution defined by the availability and political economy of construction resources throughout the decades. The pavilion thus stands as a monument to both what was lost and what remains accessible for a new generation of architects to reinterpret.
Engineering Comfort: The Climate Response
Beyond its aesthetic and conceptual depth, the pavilion functions as a masterclass in passive climate control, demonstrating the profound wisdom embedded in traditional desert architecture. The installation’s design, which integrates a deep wind tower within the roof structure, is a direct functional link to the ancient barjeel or windcatcher houses that once cooled homes across the region. This simple yet highly effective system harnesses the air currents above the structure, channeling cooler air down into the central courtyard space and simultaneously drawing out hotter air, creating a constant, natural ventilation loop.
The materials themselves contribute significantly to the thermal performance. While the arish walls offer natural shading and permit a degree of air flow, mitigating solar gain, the choice of corrugated metal for the wind tower’s cladding is an unexpected but genius regional reference. This material, often seen as cheap and purely utilitarian, was selected to absorb solar heat during the day. This absorption creates an internal thermal gradient that, combined with the tower’s height, actively drives the convection cycle, further enhancing the movement of air through the structure. The result is a demonstrable microclimate: visitors entering the central space immediately experience a significant, cooling difference in temperature compared to the surrounding sun-drenched district.
This focus on thermal mitigation through simple, non-mechanical means is arguably the installation’s most critical lesson for contemporary design. In a region where air conditioning is the norm and energy demands are immense, the pavilion advocates for a return to intelligent, low-tech climate solutions. It proves that the most sustainable architecture is often the architecture that understands the specific demands of its environment best. The passive cooling system highlights the fact that traditional building methods were not arbitrary cultural markers, but sophisticated, necessity-driven engineering solutions that maintained human comfort decades before the advent of the power grid.
A Space for Community and Dialogue
The ultimate purpose of the courtyard has always been social. Traditionally, it served as a private oasis for the household—a space where family life unfolded shielded from the outside world and the relentless heat. Some Kind of Practice translated this private function into a temporary, public one, using the pavilion as a vessel to foster interaction and community within the context of the design festival. By placing a simple table and chairs in the center of the cooling, enclosed space, the architects explicitly invited visitors to linger, converse, and inhabit the structure, effectively transforming a design exhibit into an active social nexus.
This emphasis on interaction reflects the studio’s underlying research into the structure of historical UAE neighborhoods, where communal life was often tightly knit and physically expressed through shared spaces and close proximity. The pavilion thus acts as a temporary reconstruction of this social density, a moment of reprieve and connection within the hectic atmosphere of Dubai Design Week. The ability for the structure to facilitate human gathering reinforces the core concept that architecture’s success should be measured not just by its form or materials, but by its capacity to enhance human experience and social connectivity.
The collective act of sitting down in this space, protected by the juxtaposition of modern concrete and historical palm, inherently turns the visitors into participants in a larger cultural and architectural narrative. They are not merely observing a piece of art; they are testing a hypothesis: that a thoughtfully designed, climate-responsive space can compel people to slow down and engage with one another. This focus on the human element ensures the installation’s lasting impact, turning the architectural experiment into a moment of communal reflection on the past, present, and future of regional urban life.
Reimagining the Regional Vernacular
The significance of When Does a Threshold Become a Courtyard? extends far beyond its week-long tenure at the Dubai Design District. The installation acts as a profound call to action for the wider architectural community in the Middle East and beyond. It champions a design methodology rooted in resourcefulness—using readily available, often overlooked, and traditionally sustainable “off-the-shelf” materials. In a world increasingly concerned with embodied energy and carbon footprints, the work of Some Kind of Practice offers a compelling model for how architects can create meaningful, high-performance spaces without relying on complex supply chains or energy-intensive synthetic materials.
By successfully demonstrating that materials like palm fronds and simple concrete blocks, when used with vernacular intelligence, can deliver superior climate performance, Darwish and Abbas have highlighted a path toward a more sustainable and culturally authentic modern Gulf architecture. The project serves as a reminder that the region is rich with its own architectural history, offering a deep well of knowledge for passive cooling and communal living. Ultimately, the pavilion is a quiet revolution—a powerful argument for designing from the inside out, where climate, community, and cultural memory are prioritized over globalized aesthetic trends. It insists that the future of regional design must begin by truly understanding its own past.
