Art Painting Lab gives an artsy spin to The Noodle House in Souk Madinat Jumeirah
The Noodle House refreshed their facades with a new look at one of their gorgeous landmark locations at Souk Madinat Jumeirah. Art Painting Lab together with the team at Noodle House gave a vibrant spin to the place.
They decided on a street style theme; reminiscent of Pan Asian street food, tying in with the essence of The Noodle House brand.
This concept represents the underground aesthetic of a vibrant, lively marketplace, rich with fresh ingredients and an authentic Asian vibe, setting the benchmark for the artwork to shine. The stunning hand-painted murals with a graphic approach – layered, distressed, humbling and true to the Noodle House name is used.
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.5&appId=https://www.facebook.com/designmiddleeast”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));

A four-bedroom home in midtown Toronto designed by Dubbeldam Architecture + Design, Garden Circle House is a response to the client’s desire for a sustainable home inspired by nature, connected to the outdoors and awash in daylight.
The house is imbued with wellness features, including a palette of natural materials, lush landscaping, and water features that offer both visual and auditory effects to enhance a sense of calmness. It also uses spatial strategies to maximise natural light and to visually connect to the outdoors through ample fenestration and elevated vantage points. Upon entry into the house, a direct view to the backyard lap pool and landscaping is visible through a tall, narrow window on-axis.
Looking back toward the front entry, a double-height space dramatically showcases the home’s dynamic spatial qualities, enhanced by the light that pours in from the tall windows and the abstracted shadows cast by the triangular light fixtures overhead. Views are primarily oriented to the rear yard, with access through wall-to-wall sliding doors in the kitchen. A hot tub built into the hard-wearing Cumaru outdoor decking and firepit on the small patio transforms the backyard into a relaxing oasis for three out of four seasons.
Inspired by the client’s love for Prairie Style architecture, the exterior of the house incorporates horizontal planes and overhangs, and an earthy, natural material palette of brick, wood, and stone. Buff and grey-toned brick convey a sense of solidity while Western red cedar boards and mahogany-framed windows complement the warmth of wood. Green roofs are integrated into each of the overlapping roof planes on the front and back of the house, while their soffits are detailed with Brazilian massaranduba. Integral to the front of the house is the pear tree that was retained on-site; located in front of the large dining-room window, its foliage casts an animated play of shadow and light year-round, while the scent of blossoms in spring and ripe fruit in autumn wafts through the open window.
Complementing the home’s biophilic design strategy is the prioritization of sustainability approaches and systems such as radiant in-floor heating, efficient high-velocity cooling, thermally superior wall assemblies, operable windows and skylights for natural ventilation and daylighting, LED light fixtures, low-flow plumbing fixtures, and durable, hard-wearing and low-VOC materials.
Bringing nature back to the city although not a new idea it is a growing imperative especially for cities like Nicosia IN Cyprus, which has failed to make greenery and communal public areas a priority in its urban planning.
A house that brings nature back to the city, promoting shared spaces and social dialogue between its residents is what inspired them to design the ‘’garden house’’. The design emphasises the potential for private urban gardens and the microclimates they create to improve living conditions within cities and slow global warming.
Not hiding behind fences and fully glazed on one side, our proposal aims to form a physical continuation of the adjacent public green area. The house seeks to establish a unified relationship between the neighbourhood, the private garden and the public park. Urban elements such as building, street and public space are not treated as absolute activities in isolation but as one single homogeneous configuration as the house becomes part of the park and the park is included in the house.
The integration of green areas into the house incorporates the planting of gardens on 60% of the ground floor, the use of green terrace on the first floor, the provision of bee-friendly landscapes and 40 kinds of native wildflowers. All areas inside flow on the outer spaces and are organised around a green central courtyard placed in-between two white cubic volumes. Making space for nature in the city not only brings beauty to the urban fabric but encourages the return of local bird species and bees maintaining thus urban biodiversity; furthermore, it promotes human health and well-being.
In the historic centre of a well-preserved village, opposite the church, a wine barn and its adjoining house were to be restructured (ma!ca) architecture in order to create an intimate and special living environment.
Features of heritage and prestige remained in the existing house: the stone staircase, the cement tiles, and the wooden roof framing, while the barn’s large volume and minimalist forms have turned into an open-plan and fluid living space, opening right up to the exterior through a square patio at the rear.
The existing house space is given over to the bedrooms, whereas the old wine barn welcomes the everyday family life activities. The archetypal barn form, all in one long structure, successively provides the kitchen, living room, and large table leading out onto the patio and the swimming pool. The position of the pool, adjoining the building, creates various atmospheres for each moment of life, allowing to experience the seasonal rhythms throughout the natural vibrations of air and matter.
The patio also features half of the lap pool. The “half-pool half-patio” pattern gives this water slice its fundamental posture: it is the pivot of the overall outdoor composition and connects it with the indoors.
The renowned German publishing house Suhrkamp was looking for a spatial concept that would reflect the publisher’s identity. The project in Berlin called for a tailor-made solution that would be simple and elegant and which would fit 135 employees and thousands of books.
Kinzo’s vision was a house, which rests on multi-story high stacked books instead of walls and columns. Accordingly, shelves had to fill almost every free space on the walls while simultaneously replacing them. Kinzo let the walls meander through the 6 floors of the building, like an inner facade. This idea not only created more wall space and thus sufficient shelf space on close to 5 linear kilometers, but at the same time optimised the area of the rooms and created small niches – usable for all employees as retreat rooms for spontaneous meetings, communication islands, think tanks or telephone booths.
Kinzo not only made it possible to integrate all the books and shelves into the space, but also to create a space that was both tailored to the different requirements of the users and flexible at the same time allowing colleagues to work across rooms with natural communication at eye level. Although high-quality materials and products were used and many fixtures had to be custom-made, the solutions remained cost-effective and within budget. Kinzo successfully met the requirements and needs of an institution of high culture that now presents itself with a fresh face.
Roar has given the iconic Dubai restaurant Mezza House a contemporary overhaul. Drawing inspiration from the dramatic landscape of the Yarmouk River Valley – a small but magically diverse ecosystem on the border of Syria and Jordan. Reminiscent of Mezza House’s cuisine, which seamlessly fuses the different Levantine cultures, Roar has conceived a contemporary interior that reflects this wealth of subtle but important regional influences.
The restaurant is organised as a succession of naturally flowing areas rather than one open-planned space. A key part of the redesign is the labyrinthine network of golden pipes that runs across the restaurant, visually structuring the different zones and mapping out the guests’ journey.