From the studio.
How projects actually work: appointments, fees, approvals and the roles that shape a building.
The RIBA Stages Explained
The RIBA Plan of Work gives an international project team one answer to the question of where it has got to. What each stage decides, and what it quietly locks, is more useful than remembering which number goes with which name.
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Commissioning an Architect
Most advice on choosing an architect is about taste, which is the easiest part to judge and the least consequential. The harder question is what the practice is actually being paid to do, and where the gaps in that answer will surface.
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How Branded Residences Are Designed
The commercial logic of branded residences is well understood. What is discussed less is the design problem underneath: a private home that must also carry, permanently, a name it does not own.
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Designing on the Palm Jumeirah
The island is one of the most recognisable addresses in the region. What is discussed less is what that address demands of the building, and why almost none of it can be resolved late.
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What a Hotel Operator Requires
Operators arrive early, in writing and in detail, and developers building their first hotel are often surprised by how much is settled before the architect draws anything. That document is not an imposition. It is what a business learned expensively.
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Designing a Stadium
A stadium is one of the few building types where the architecture is subordinate to something measurable: whether tens of thousands of people can see, arrive and leave safely. Everything expressive sits on top of that.
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Designing Around Constraints You Have Not Met Yet
The changes that damage a project are rarely the ones a client asks for. They are the ones a design walks into, because it moved faster than the decisions it depended on.
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Designing Within a Masterplanned Context
A plot in a comprehensively planned district comes with more than a boundary. It comes with decisions somebody else took while thinking about the whole place, and the interesting question is what they leave you.
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Masterplanning a Coastal Resort
Almost every decision that determines how a resort feels is taken at masterplan stage, and most become irreversible once infrastructure is in the ground. Coastal sites concentrate the difficulty.
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Villa or Tower
Clients who have developed one and are approaching the other usually expect the difference to be scale. It is not. It is who the building is for, and where the difficulty sits.
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Designing for Heat
Heat can be solved with plant, and the result is a building that is comfortable, expensive to run and thermally dependent. The more interesting question is how much work the architecture can do before the cooling starts.
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Why Concept Design Deserves Its Own Appointment
The decisions with the longest consequences are taken when the least is known and the fewest people are in the room. There is a case for treating that phase as a commission in its own right.
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How Design Approvals Work in Dubai
Approvals are usually described as a step at the end of design. They are better understood as a constraint that shapes the design from the first week.
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Hospitality Architecture in the UAE: Designing for an Operator
A hotel is a machine that has to feel like a place. The architecture serves an operating business, and almost every decision is legible in someone's profit and loss account.
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What Does Lead Design Consultancy Mean?
On a project with a dozen specialists, somebody has to be accountable for the design as a whole. That role has a name, and leaving it unassigned is a decision with consequences.
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Architect, Contractor, Consultant: Who Does What on a Project
Most project disputes are not disagreements about design. They are disagreements about who was supposed to decide something — usually settled long before anyone noticed.
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Do You Need an Architect for a Villa in Dubai?
For a private villa the honest answer is: it depends on the plot, the community and what you want the house to be. Here is how to tell which situation you are in.
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Masterplanning in the Gulf: What Makes a Plan Endure
A masterplan is a promise about a future nobody can see. The ones that endure share a small number of structural qualities — and almost none of them are about the drawing.
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Designing High-Rise Residential Towers in Dubai
A residential tower is an argument about repetition. Every decision taken once at floor plate level is repeated fifty times, which is what makes early design so consequential.
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What Is a Branded Residence?
A branded residence is a residential building operated or licensed under an established brand. The model is well understood commercially; its architectural demands are less often discussed.
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Understanding the RIBA Stages on UAE Projects
The RIBA Plan of Work gives a common language for project stages. Understanding what each stage decides — and what it locks — is more useful than memorising the numbering.
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Architect Fees in Dubai: Understanding the Design Process
Fee proposals are difficult to compare because they price different things. Understanding how architectural appointments are structured makes the comparison possible.
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What Does a Design Architect Actually Do?
On large developments the design architect is one role among several, with a defined beginning and end. Understanding where it starts and stops explains a great deal about how buildings turn out.
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How to Choose an Architecture Firm in the UAE
Choosing an architecture firm in the UAE is less about style than about scope, accountability and continuity. A practical framework for evaluating practices before appointment.
What are Insights?
Explanatory articles about how architecture actually works in the UAE: how appointments are structured, how fees are set, how approvals run, and who is accountable for what on a project.
Who writes them?
Benjelloun & Partners. They are written from the practice’s own project experience rather than as general commentary.
How is this different from News?
Insights explain a process or a typology and stay useful over time. News reports something the practice has done — an award, a project milestone, a studio announcement.
Can I ask about something the articles do not cover?
Yes. Email enquiries@benjellounpartners.com or use the enquiry form on the Contact page.