01
The brief
The commission covers a private family palace in Dammam, and it reaches from the street to the most private rooms of the house. On the outside, NoVi designed the elevations and the landscaped entrance area. Inside, the brief lists the first-floor living room and majlis, a series of suites for members of the family, and the bathrooms — each developed as its own design.
The family suites were designed room by room and presented in successive submissions — first, second and, for some rooms, third — so that each room could be reviewed and refined with the family before its design was settled.
02
The challenge
A Gulf family home works on two registers at once. The majlis and the living room receive guests and carry the house's formality; the suites belong to individual family members and have to feel personal, private and restful. A palace adds scale to both: tall rooms, long walls and large openings that can easily feel empty or overworked.
Several suites for different family members raise a further question: how to give each room its own character while the house still reads as one family of interiors — and how to carry that same language out to the façade and the entrance that every visitor sees first.
03
Our approach
The renders show a clear hierarchy. Outside, a classical façade — pediment, paired columns, balustrades, moulded panels on the boundary wall — is softened by palms and a garden entrance of stone stepping slabs set in lawn, lit by wall lanterns. Inside, the first-floor living room takes up the same language as carved French-classical wall panelling with gilded sconces, a stone fireplace and marble floors.
The family suites then vary the theme: one with a chinoiserie mural wall and crystal chandelier, another in soft whites with framed art, another with a marbled feature wall and velvet chaise. Warm herringbone parquet, dressing rooms with fluted-glass wardrobes and bronze frames, and marble bathrooms with black-framed glass showers and freestanding tubs make each suite a self-contained private retreat.
