Urban Commissions 2025 Winner: Some Kind of Practice Reimagines the Courtyard in Dubai
Each year during Dubai Design Week, the highly anticipated Urban Commissions competition challenges architects and designers to experiment with outdoor infrastructure for the public realm. Since its launch, the initiative has established itself as a vital platform for emerging and established creatives, fostering experimental works that blend innovation, heritage, and urban life in the UAE.
For 2025, the competition centred on the theme of the “Courtyard”; a spatial typology with deep roots in the region, yet one that resonates across climates and cultures worldwide. Historically, the courtyard has been a place of gathering, reflection, and climate-responsive living. It is both architectural and social: a private refuge and a communal ground. The challenge asked participants to reimagine the courtyard as a piece of urban infrastructure, rethinking its role in contemporary cities while drawing inspiration from heritage forms that dissolve boundaries between architecture, public furniture, and shared community space.
This year’s winning proposal, titled “When Does a Threshold Become a Courtyard?”, was awarded to Some Kind of Practice, a UAE-based design and research studio founded by Omar Darwish and Abdulla Abbas.
Some Kind of Practice: Redefining Design in the Gulf
Some Kind of Practice is a studio that frames design as a tool for collective inquiry. With a methodology rooted in field research, archival engagement, and collaborative processes, the practice focuses on making visible what is often unseen. Their work moves fluidly between built interventions, curatorial projects, educational initiatives, and research exhibitions, exploring the cultural, social, and environmental dynamics of the Gulf region.
Whether through public installations or academic collaborations, their approach emphasises design as a means of listening, remembering, and responding with care. This ethos is particularly evident in their Urban Commissions proposal, where the act of building is understood not as the creation of a static object, but as an unfolding dialogue between context, craft, and community.
The Courtyard in Emirati Architecture
Their project draws inspiration from the housh (الحوش), the Emirati courtyard. Unlike the more formal, central courtyards found in the urban homes of Egypt, Syria, or Saudi Arabia, the housh in the Emirates is more organic. It emerges as a byproduct of necessity, shaped by shifting walls, open thresholds, and the transitional presence of the liwan (الليوان).
In this sense, the Emirati courtyard is less a matter of fixed geometry and more a reflection of climate, materials, and patterns of communal life. It is adaptive, pragmatic, and above all, responsive to its environment.
Some Kind of Practice approached the courtyard not as an architectural typology to be replicated, but as a phenomenon that happens when walls, airflow, roofs, and human movement intersect. This subtle yet profound shift reframes the courtyard as something inherently adaptable; a space defined as much by its users and context as by its material construction.
Fieldwork Across the Emirates
The winning design is deeply informed by extensive fieldwork across the Emirates, where the studio studied settlements ranging from coastal towns to remote mountain villages. Their observations revealed a logic of assemblage and adaptation: local builders creating courtyards with whatever materials were available, stacking stone or concrete block, spanning Arish or corrugated steel, leaving gaps for ventilation and airflow.
Rather than identifying a singular style, the studio uncovered a logic of practical craft, where courtyards emerge as adaptive responses to place. This study highlighted how vernacular architecture in the UAE has always been grounded in resourcefulness, flexibility, and human interaction with the environment.
It is this same logic that informs When Does a Threshold Become a Courtyard?. By focusing on observation and assemblage, the project demonstrates that courtyards do not need to be designed as monumental statements. Instead, they can emerge quietly and responsively—a byproduct of studying, making, and reassembling what is already present.
The Winning Proposal
Some Kind of Practice’s installation for Urban Commissions 2025 captures the spirit of the Emirati housh while reinterpreting it for contemporary urban life in Dubai. By blurring the boundaries between public furniture, communal infrastructure, and architecture, the project demonstrates how a courtyard can exist anywhere thresholds intersect.
This design does not present a courtyard as a fixed form, but as a spatial condition—a gathering that happens when materials, structures, and human movement converge. In this way, the winning project reflects both the timelessness of the courtyard and its potential as a tool for designing more inclusive, climate-responsive cities.
Urban Commissions: A Platform for Innovation
Since its inception, Urban Commissions has been a vital initiative within Dubai Design Week, providing architects and designers the opportunity to experiment with design in the public realm. Past winners have created installations that blur the lines between art, design, and urban infrastructure, offering innovative solutions to contemporary challenges in the region’s built environment.
The 2025 edition continues this tradition, highlighting how the courtyard —a deeply rooted typology in the Middle East —can inspire fresh conversations around sustainability, urban identity, and community building. By selecting Some Kind of Practice as the winner, the competition underscores the importance of heritage-driven innovation in shaping the public spaces of tomorrow.
Why Courtyards Matter Today
In a time of rapid urbanisation, rising temperatures, and the need for sustainable public spaces, the courtyard offers timeless lessons. Its climate-responsive strategies, natural ventilation, and capacity to encourage social interaction make it a model for resilient urban design.
The work of Some Kind of Practice demonstrates how local architectural traditions in the UAE can provide critical insights into designing cities that are not only functional but also inclusive and culturally resonant. By reframing the courtyard as a threshold condition rather than a fixed form, their project opens up possibilities for new kinds of urban commons in the Gulf and beyond.
The selection of Some Kind of Practice as the Urban Commissions 2025 winner reinforces the role of Dubai Design Week as a platform for experimental design in the public realm. Their project, When Does a Threshold Become a Courtyard?, bridges heritage and innovation, honouring the adaptive logic of Emirati courtyards while envisioning their relevance for the future of cities.
As Dubai continues to position itself as a global design hub, initiatives like Urban Commissions highlight the importance of regional narratives, climate-responsive strategies, and inclusive public infrastructure in shaping the city’s evolving identity.
For visitors to Dubai Design Week, the installation offers not just a visual experience, but an invitation to reflect on how thresholds, materials, and human presence can together create courtyards that are alive, responsive, and deeply connected to place.
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