- Sheet
- RK-01
- Location
- Al Barari, Dubai
- Status
- Built 2024
House of Three Shadows
A family house organised around three courtyards, each shaded at a different hour.
Architecture atelier · d3, Dubai · est. 2016
We design the shadow first.
Then the building that casts it.
8 people, one long bench, and a conviction: in the Gulf, shade, mass and moving air are the architecture — the rest is finish. Houses, adaptive reuse, and public space.
- Sheet
- RK-01
- Project
- House of Three Shadows
- Location
- Al Barari, Dubai
- Status
- Built 2024
01
Shade is structure
In the Gulf, shadow is not an effect — it is the building's first job. We design the shadow, then the thing that casts it.
02
Thickness beats machinery
A wall that holds the night's coolness until mid-afternoon outperforms most of what plugs in. We spend the budget on mass and section before systems.
03
The best building may exist
Reuse first, honestly costed. Warehouse 09 saved ~640 tonnes of embodied carbon by keeping a shed everyone wanted to demolish.
Selected sheets
Six projects. Every one an argument about shade.
- Sheet
- RK-02
- Location
- Mirdif, Dubai
- Status
- Built 2023
Mashrabiya Rowhouses
Eight houses sharing party walls and a screened street face — density as a cooling strategy.
- Sheet
- RK-03
- Location
- Al Quoz, Dubai
- Status
- Built 2022
Warehouse 09
An industrial shed kept cool, dark and almost untouched — the cheapest square metres we ever saved.
Measured, not claimed
Shade you can put a number on.
−17 °C
ceiling temperature, Warehouse 09, before any interior work
≈640 t
embodied CO₂ saved by reuse on one shed
8 °C
cooler than the street — the deep court at House of Three Shadows, no machines
New work
Bring us a plot, a shed, or a courtyard that bakes.
We take on a handful of projects a year and say so honestly when we’re full. First conversations cost nothing and often end with us recommending less building than you asked about.