nabil gholam architects

26/02/2026

Lagoon Mansions

This 'mega mansion' in Tilal Al Ghaf required rethinking space organization and scale. How do you create warmth and domestic quality within a vast program?

The solution: a 'houses within a house' concept. Functions divide into smaller program clusters arranged as volumes branching from a central horizontal spine, unified under one sinuous roof. Deliberate spatial hierarchy ensures each volume offers unique atmosphere, playing with level, privacy, view, materials, and scale to create varying intimacy degrees.

Rough stone and wood palettes ensure cohesion across entities. Main circulation and services occupy an undulating ribbon that introduces water features and green pockets, enlivening the axial arrangement while bringing scale to human level.
Positioned between volumes, these relaxing outdoor spaces orient toward the lagoon, capturing views of both gardens and sea.

24/02/2026

Curaçao Museum Extension

On Curaçao's Caribbean shores, this classified 1856 neoclassical building, the island's earliest example, once served as a military hospital extension beside the 1853 Curaçao Museum.

Preservation guided every decision. Leaving structural integrity intact, the refurbishment transforms the interior into unique residential units while respecting historical context. A complete internal metamorphosis contains itself within a Corten envelope that slightly offsets from outer walls, leaving them untouched. A streamlined spiral staircase echoes the building's original style.

Exterior intervention remains minimal, a Corten sun breaker crowns the roof for Caribbean shade, while outdoor living spaces extend from the interior envelope without disrupting the historical façade reading.

The Corten cladding marks intervention points, creating a separate visual identity that neatly superimposes old with new, a dialogue between preservation and contemporary living.

19/02/2026

Beach Club Villas

Four exclusive villas line the Tilal Al Ghaf Lagoon's edge, offering private water access and beach club proximity within Dubai's evolving architectural landscape.
Rootedness defines the design. At each entrance, massive hammered stone walls establish individual identity while sliding past one another in dynamic, playful rhythm. Glass and protective screens create interplay between volumes.

Each villa features private gardens, outdoor patios, and pools centered around an inner courtyard—a sheltered focal point where formal and family living spaces unfold, bringing nature into the home's comfort.

Purposefully grounded within natural topography, these single-floor villas remain minimally intrusive to the landscape. Open floor plans and free-flowing spaces characterize the interiors, while concealed roof terraces atop each villa extend the private garden experience. Hidden staircases within prominent stone walls lead to elevated lagoon vistas.

17/02/2026

Beach Club Townhouses

Twenty-eight private townhouses redefine Dubai living, merging city sophistication with suburban tranquility in the prestigious Tilal Al Ghaf Lagoon area.

The design creates interplay between adjoining volumes, one third of each villa recessed to form entrance spaces. Compact units, offset from one another, establish visual rhythm across the grouped arrangement. Following the masterplan's snaking contours, the townhouses break traditional alignments, creating a dynamic, subtly textured street façade. Strategic subtractions from each mass generate semi-outdoor areas that introduce greenery into living spaces, optimally framing lagoon views on one side and parkland on the other. The experience unfolds through a procession of single and double-height spaces from entrance to garden. Spanning three stories, this compact typology feels paradoxically spacious, offering single-home ownership comfort on minimal lots with the privilege of a highly desirable Dubai address.

12/02/2026

Nautile

Embodying the smoothness of a carefully honed shell, Nautile is a protected natural capsule for living, the elegant counterpoint to its neighboring Geode villa.
While Geode turns inward, Nautile embraces an extroverted design. A singular sculpted circulation pattern generates cohesive mass as a unified architectural signature. Semi-circular subtractions create outward-oriented green pockets that blur interior and exterior boundaries, linking inner circulation with the landscape beyond.
These concave surfaces, organized along a linear datum, harbor gardens and water features that encourage biophilic living. Double-height façade curvatures with clean-cut edges and sleek travertine finishes subtly draw attention to green intermediate spaces, inviting exploration deeper into the home.
Behind these walls, main living spaces rise to full villa height, playing with scale within pure geometries—alternating pocket gardens and a sunken pool create unexpected spatial experiences.

10/02/2026

Qortuba Oasis

Nestled in northeastern Riyadh, this low-rise residential compound creates comfortable outdoor living for expatriates despite the challenging climate.
Three apartment types, six villa configurations, and varied unit blocks ensure flexibility and long-term appeal while avoiding visual repetition common in regional compounds. Landscaping, water features, community squares, and a health club foster connection and wellbeing.

Passive strategies—intelligent façades, sun shading, cross-ventilation, wind towers, and low heat-absorption materials—create micro-environments for each building. Active systems including solar energy, greywater recycling, and irrigation storage achieve comfort sustainably.

Qortuba Oasis demonstrates how thoughtful design can reimagine compound life in Saudi Arabia while respecting the environment.

Cityscape Global Awards 2018, Winner Residential
Low to Medium-Rise category for built projects

Photo .pinarelli

05/02/2026

Geode

Inspired by natural crystal formations, this six-bedroom villa in Dubai embodies raw, earthy aesthetics through fragmented geometric massing.

Detached angular volumes encircle a green central courtyard, creating circular flow through strategic breaks. These corridors frame view sequences toward landscape and sea beyond. The introverted core allows cross-views into different recesses with light wells illuminating each space, while the periphery opens to gardens and Gulf waters.

Jagged cyclopean concrete slabs unify dispersed living pods with stratified horizontal façades. Rough textures and sharp angles permeate walls, terraces, parapets, and hanging consoles, embodying the essence of a geode stone.
Monolithic pieces act as hybrids of individual crystals and collective mineral groupings, reflected in the villa's protective architectural scale.

03/02/2026

679

Perched on Raouché's sloping terrain, this residential complex comprises two mid-rise buildings and a cascading villa embraced by natural landscape. Interlocking volumes shift to frame Mediterranean views and the iconic Raouché Rocks from every floor.

A green piazza connects all three structures, descending to naturally lit amenities below. The design navigates airport fly zone restrictions and steep topography through embedded levels and thoughtful space planning.

Environmental sustainability drives the architecture, vertical south-facing shading, photovoltaic-ready roofs, rainwater collection, and green terraces crown each volume. Thick, faceted concrete slabs mimic coastal stone stratification, while colorful gradient panels create playful shadow interplay, echoing Beirut's hopeful 1960s-70s architecture.

30/01/2026

29/01/2026

Skylife

Rising boldly in Palm Beach Jumeirah, Skylife embraces the Arabian Gulf and Dubai skyline with iconic modern design.

Spanning the plot's full width, the tower offers spacious modular apartments and sky-villas with dual sea views, generous terraces, and suspended gardens. Expressive curved structures soften the building's scale, breaking rigid geometry while single and double-height interiors maximize uninterrupted vistas.

The landscaped podium creates an oasis, a 200-meter infinity pool, botanical gardens, and private townhouses with dedicated gardens line the seafront edge. Extensive greenery and thoughtful shading provide tranquil outdoor sanctuaries.

At the pinnacle, a rooftop park unveils sweeping 360-degree panoramas of the Gulf and cityscape from beneath a dense panoramic garden.

27/01/2026

Industrial Campus

Nestled in Egypt's Sinai, this 36,000m² campus serves a major industrial complex while creating sanctuary from the harsh desert landscape.

The design pushes service buildings to the site's periphery, forming a protective enclosure around a central oasis. A network of internal courtyards, squares, and bridges connects low-rise structures, landscaped with reflecting ponds as the project's 'Central Park.'

Fostering community among workers and teachers, the campus encourages them to work, study, train, play, and rest within one restorative environment.

Environmentally conscious strategies - passive cooling, thermal mass, solid façades - mitigate desert heat gain.

Above all, the objective of the design is to create a communal environment that benefits the workers mentally, spiritually, and physically, a space they truly long to return to after a day at the factory.