Damac Row I

With 1,881 sq.ft of plot, the only direction available was up, and the design takes that constraint as its idea. Three storeys sit tight to the boundary, each given the full width of the site and its own outdoor room — a recessed balcony at first floor, a projecting terrace above it, a pergola-shaded deck on the roof. Because the plot leaves no garden, the outdoor life of the house is distributed vertically instead of horizontally. Glazing runs wall to wall behind slim dark frames so the interiors borrow a depth the plan cannot give them, and recessed light under each projecting slab separates the floors at night. Repeated across three plots, the design holds one street frontage while each house keeps a distinct entrance.