Three Gardens and a Room by NAO Architects at Dubai Design Week 2026 – Photo by Mohamed Hussein @d.wtrmln.

Design. In Dubai Design District, D3, a pastel coloured pavilion offers shelter and intimacy amid the metropolis’s hustle and bustle. Three Gardens and a Room, created for Dubai Design Week by Reem Nassour, founder of local studio NAO Architects, reimagines the garden through four architectural elements: roof, mound, hearth and enclosure.

• RELATED STORIES: Read more about Dubai Design Week 2026 on Archipanic.

Photo by Archipanic.

Three gardens gather around a shared central alcove, each setting its own mood through foliage, colour, shade, thermal comfort, materiality and filtered light. Visitors roam and settle in.

“Curved walls, circular forms, perforated screens and thresholds allow you to dissolve and diffuse light as it comes through,” Nassour says. “We’re looking at the sun as a material itself. And as it rises, peaks and sets, the colours will change. We want you to run your hands along the wall; we want you to peer through the perforated blocks.”

Courtesy of Dubai Design Week.

At the core of the pavilion, NAO Architects created an alcove where visitors can gather, pause and connect. The installation highlights how simple, almost primordial, architectural elements can shape the experience of place. “Humans have always looked for shade and shelter, and the first place we often found both of those things was beneath a tree.”

Photo via IG, follow @alfatihadesigns.

The UAE’s climate and natural environment shape the architecture. “As a child who grew up here, throughout my practice and projects, I always try to make a point that the UAE is extremely resourceful. We can be autonomous.” Nothing here is disposable: the elements and trees are headed for a new life after Dubai Design Week.

Photo via IG, follow @alfatihadesigns.

The pavilion won the Urban Commissions, Dubai Design Week’s annual contest for architects exploring how design can shape civic life. This year’s theme, Atmospheres, “really asked us to engage with ideas of colour, texture, materiality and temperature.”

For NAO Architects, the garden is less ornament than argument: shade, shelter and filtered light, assembled from simple elements, are enough to make a room. It is as old as the tree we sheltered beneath; the sun is its material.

Photo by Mohamed Hussein @d.wtrmln.