A veil
you control.
The façade is wrapped in a stainless-steel veil — the tower takes its name from it. It is not decoration: the mesh moves on a drive, and you operate it from inside the residence. It is a modern reading of the traditional Arabic mashrabiya — the latticed screen that has filtered light and shielded homes across the region for centuries.
The veil filters the light, softening the midday sun without taking the view away, and closes you off from outside eyes when you want it to.
Two sides
of one home.
Every residence is dual-aspect, opening onto a courtyard on each side. To the south-west, the canal and sunsets over the Arabian Gulf; to the north-east, Downtown Dubai. Each residence is reached through a private lift lobby — you meet no neighbours on the way home.
That is rare in a tower: most apartments face one way, and the second view has to be traded against the first. Here you have both — sunrise and sunset.
The architects call it the transversal space: the residence runs right through the building, and the air moves across it from one façade to the other.
Why the tower
is built this way.
RCR Arquitectes won the Pritzker Prize — architecture’s highest honour — for buildings that grow out of a place rather than sit on it. Muraba Veil is their first skyscraper; until now the studio built museums, schools and houses in the Catalan foothills.
The architects describe Veil as a building born of the desert: it rises from the dunes, and inside every floor holds water, shade and planting. Underneath it are old principles of the eastern house — shelter from the climate, closeness to nature in every room.
Hence decisions unusual for Dubai: open-air gardens on the floors, a veil instead of the usual mirrored glass, and an oasis underground. At the foot of the tower, pools sit among tall palms; beneath them Dune drops away into shade, water and recovery.
Curious how the form came about? →
