Abu Dhabi's climate is arid desert: summer temperatures regularly exceed 45°C with very low humidity and intense direct solar radiation, followed by a mild, pleasant winter — the reverse of Bali's constant humid heat. Design responses that work in the tropics, like open verandas and cross-ventilation, are largely unusable for most of the year here; buildings instead rely on sealed, heavily insulated envelopes, mechanical cooling, and shading strategies like deep-set windows, mashrabiya-style screens and courtyard planning drawn from the region's own architectural tradition. The luxury residential market spans high-rise apartments on Abu Dhabi's islands and gated villa compounds inland, both built around that cooling-first logic.
The studio has no built project in the UAE, and its passive-cooling, open-air Bali design vocabulary does not transfer directly to a climate this extreme — that's worth saying plainly rather than glossing over. What does carry across is the Italian training in spatial planning, proportion and material selection, plus experience managing design remotely for international clients across time zones. Any Abu Dhabi project would need a UAE-licensed architect and engineer of record, since the emirate's building codes, structural requirements for extreme heat and municipal approval process are specific to the market and outside the studio's own licensure.
Has the studio completed a project in Abu Dhabi or the UAE?
No. Built work is in Bali and Indonesia and separately in the Caribbean and Latin America; a UAE project would be a first, run with a local licensed architect for code compliance.
Is tropical design experience actually useful in a desert climate?
Some of it — daylight control, material behavior under heat, spatial planning — but the core passive-cooling strategy from humid tropical design doesn't apply; a desert project relies more on sealed envelopes and mechanical systems than on natural ventilation.
How is this different from the Qatar page?
Abu Dhabi's market leans more toward island high-rise living and large villa compounds; Qatar's capital, Doha, has a different, more recently built high-rise skyline and a distinct set of local regulations — see that page for the comparison.
For an interior or residential project in Abu Dhabi, contact the studio to discuss scope and how a UAE-licensed architect of record would be brought in. For the neighboring Gulf market, see Qatar; for another example of the studio's remote-led international process, see Shanghai.