Location: Riyadhh, Saudi Arabia

Scope: Design

Year: 2016

Status: Complete

Team: Khalid Henaidy, Asia Khan,

Briefing:

To develop a 3 storey family villa on a corner plot of a residential block.

Architectural Solution:

Despite having to comply to the local building codes that ubiquitously impose the same setbacks in relation to the plot’s perimeter the design attempts to recover the more traditional middle eastern approach to urbanity that ensured an extreme level of privacy of residential buildings by making use of internal courtyards for natural ventilation and light.

The boundary wall is made to be part of the residence by becoming the main visual limit of the ground level that forms a continuous garden, only partially occupied by the garage and the reception area.

The upper floors are enclosed behind a suspended wall cantilevered from the peripheral wall giving the impression of resting perilously on the only two existing enclosed volumes, the staircase and the kitchen, that organise the ground floor space.

Two suspended patios will literally act as filters by secluding all external spaces and views on to the exterior and by ensuring that natural light enters the house indirectly.

Thus, trees will literally grow through the house against a backdrop of walls that will dynamically register the position of the sun.

The abstract solid perception of the villa will be interrupted by a single opening positioned on the plot’s corner revealing the void formed by one of its patios together with its vegetation, playfully inverting the order of what is exterior and what is interior.