To anchor this diverse program across two adjacent plots, we created a new typology — a terraced landscape that incorporates parking, courtyard villas, gardens, retail, and amenities within a cohesive, accessible whole. The podium transforms the given constraints into an opportunity, proposing an urban architectural response that fosters connections with the surroundings. Rising from this plinth are two elevated residential towers, their massing carefully staggered to form a slim vertical slab offering unobstructed panoramic views. Crowning the towers is a layer of sky-villas that step back progressively from the center, creating a roofline that opens toward the sky.
Houses in the Sky
The residential towers were developed from the inside out to ensure a high-quality living environment. Conceived as a combination of floating slabs and stacks of individual rooms – some with fully glazed façades, others with distinctive bay windows — the towers offer residents a variety of panoramic and framed views. The bay window archetype gives the building a human scale by providing signature spaces for each unit, while shaping the residential terraces and balconies and ensuring privacy between neighboring apartments. Together, these houses in the sky form a vertical neighborhood that defines the project’s individual, personal character.
A Stepped Podium
Across the region, anonymous multistory parking facilities are too often accepted as a given, resulting in lifeless urban spaces. Our proposal is characterized by a series of articulated slabs that step down to respond sensitively to the scale and conditions of both the street and the promenade along the bay. Individual shops and restaurants activate the public realm, while courtyard villas and their gardens reinforce a residential character for the entire podium. A series of narrow stepped walkways carved between buildings bring residents of the villas and guests of the amenity spaces past terraced gardens to the embankment of Oval Bay. Multiple pools and the dense indigenous vegetation of the podium create a unique microclimate — a comfortable and shaded environment for the community living in the Riviera Residences.
Facades and Materiality
The project evolves from the intimate scale of playful residential units and courtyard houses to a large, interconnected entity. All façade elements are set back from the slab edge, emphasizing visual lightness and individuality while allowing the slabs and the geometry of the towers to provide passive shading to the façade. The stacking of various programs and residence types is unified by distinctive bay window volumes; Treated with a pearlescent glazed ceramic finish as a nod to the local pearl diving heritage, the rhythm of these elements create modulation within the facade — a strategy that maintains a reasonable balance of glazed to solid, in contrast to the surrounding anonymous, hermetic fully-glazed facades. Operable windows provide residents with the opportunity for an ‘indoor-outdoor’ lifestyle, as large sliding doors can be opened to extend living spaces onto balconies during temperate months.
Communal Interiors
Within the building, the public spaces are characterized by a series of bespoke design solutions that are both contextual and contemporary. The material choices for these spaces evoke the natural surroundings, featuring finishes based on pearls and shells that eventually erode into sand, the sand itself, and the glass it is made with; As a key element of the interiors, a 7.5 meter high by 36 meter long sand-printed wall in the main lobby is based on a historical 19th Century lithographic pearl diving scene. Additional mineral materials, including custom terrazzo floors, provide a cool touch in a hot climate.
The amenities cater to the varied needs of local and international residents. A large Lounge and Family Room provide a comfortable place for dinners and parties as an alternative to hosting at home. Additionally, generous play, sport and spa areas are also organized with a strong relationship to the terraced gardens of the podium. All these spaces are carefully designed with high attention to detail, aiming to foster community and enliven this new neighborhood on Al Reem Island.
