Living
One seating group, one low table, one lamp. The room is deliberately under-furnished so the view has somewhere to land.
Serein Apartment
A high-floor apartment reduced to four materials and one instruction: never compete with the window.
- Location
- Dubai, UAE
- Area
- 2,150 sq. ft.
- Type
- Residential
- Year
- 2025
- Scope
- Complete Interior
- Programme
- 7 months
§ 01
Project story
A high-floor apartment reduced to four materials and one instruction: never compete with the window.
Everything in this flat sits below sill height. The client’s view is the most expensive thing they own and the interior’s job was to get out of its way — low furniture, a single pale plaster tone, and no wall art on the window wall at all.
West-facing glass in Dubai delivers heat and a great deal of glare. Layered sheers on a recessed track, a plaster with enough tooth to diffuse rather than bounce, and mid-toned floors that do not throw light back into the ceiling.
A tight plan opened up by moving one wall: the kitchen was turned to face the living room, which gained four metres of usable length and cost nothing but a re-routed extract.
Meera Anand, Devika Raghunath
§ 02
The design
Five materials carry the whole project. Everything else is a variation on one of them.
Warm PlasterAll walls and ceilings
Smoked OakFloors and joinery
TravertineBathroom and tabletops
Alabaster GlassLight fittings
BronzeIronmongery
§ 03
Room by room
Kitchen
Turned through ninety degrees during design so the cook faces the room. Handleless, beige on beige, with a stone worktop that returns to the floor at one end.
Bedroom
A platform bed with integrated bedside surfaces, so nothing stands on the floor and the room can be cleaned in one pass.
Bathroom
Travertine on four surfaces and nothing else. The shower has no threshold and no visible drain from the door.
Dining
Six seats on a marble top, lit by one fitting hung low enough to make the table feel like a room of its own.
Dressing
Glazed wardrobes, internally lit, treated as furniture rather than as built-in storage.
The sofa, the bed platform and the entrance bench were drawn for the flat; all three are lower than standard by 60–90 mm to keep the sightline to the window clear from a seated position.
Almost entirely indirect. Coves, one floor lamp per seating group, and picture lights on the internal wall — the only wall permitted to hold anything.
§ 04
The plan
LivingKitchenDiningBedroomBathTerrace
- 1
- 6
- West-facing, full-height glazing
- 2,150 sq. ft. on one level
§ 05
Gallery
Maison No. 8