‘When you have the same types of buildings and spaces replicated everywhere, you lose any sense of place,’ states Henrique Dias, Middle East Hospitality & Mixed-Use Director at DLR Group, in an interview with designboom. Across the Middle East, cities are building at an unprecedented speed and monumental scale. As sprawling block footprints and towering verticality dominate the landscape, urban density is often viewed as an environmental and psychological challenge. In our conversation with DLR Group, it becomes clear that the key challenge of modern urbanism is not high density itself, but how that density is designed, experienced, and rooted in place. Key decisions about scale, walkability, and sensory environment determine how millions of people experience life for generations.
‘Density isn’t the problem — repetitive, overwhelming design is. In our design process, we create spaces that allow users to connect with the environment and navigate a complex plan while recognizing that every location and design is distinct,’ continues Dias. ‘From a landscape perspective at the ground level, it’s about creating distinct moments within dense environments, giving people choices, whether for gathering, socializing, or finding quiet spaces. It comes down to sensory richness and variety rather than repetition,’ adds Stefan du Toit, Design Director, Landscape. For DLR Group’s work in the Middle East, that philosophy plays out differently depending on terrain, climate, and cultural context, from mountain masterplans in Makkah to heritage-driven interiors in Abha.
DLR Group creates for human scale by integrating porosity and organic flow into what otherwise might be one large mixed-use block | all images courtesy of DLR Group
HOW DLR GROUP BRINGS SPATIAL CALM TO DENSE URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
By shifting the lens from megaproject massing to human-scale perception, DLR Group’s multidisciplinary team aligns master planning, architecture, landscape, and interior design to translate massive urban footprints into legible, approachable, and deeply authentic communities. Humans require environments that feel intuitive, welcoming, and responsive to maintain a sense of emotional security. When developments become overly uniform or monumental, individuals lose their bearings and lack a clear pathway to connect with the surrounding space.
‘Architecture can sometimes suffer from designer ego, where architects try to scream louder than one another with flashy, contextless sculptures,’ reflects Dias. ‘There is no room for architectural ego in designing for the greater good of the project and end user. The design must be humble, meaningful, and aligned with the user experience while meeting client expectations.’ To counter this alienation, DLR Group prioritizes spatial clarity and cognitive ease over visual spectacle, embedding tactile materials, balanced spatial hierarchies, and central civic anchors to foster daily social encounters and a genuine resonance with nature.
rooted in Makkah’s spiritual and natural identity, MAAD’s mixed-use masterplan is designed to balance seasonal pilgrim flows with permanent urban livability
DECONSTRUCTING SCALE AT FOR SENSORY-RICH AND WALKABLE COMMUNITIES
A human-scale experience is primarily won or lost at the horizontal surface where people actually stand and move. Rather than allowing high-rise structures to plunge abruptly into hard paving, landscape architecture acts as a vital calibration tool, stepping down massive architectural volumes into digestible foregrounds.
‘We view landscape as an interface between the scale of architecture and the human scale,’ explains Stefan du Toit, Design Director, Landscape. ‘Instead of creating an abrupt transition between a high-rise building and the ground level, we step it down using curated topography and layered experiences. As a user approaches a building, we break down that mass using plants, shade structures, and artistic features. Working hand-in-hand with architects allows us to introduce new amenities at multiple vertical levels, breaking the sheer scale into digestible human experiences.’
EMAAR – The Heights in Dubai, UAE, breaks down a large development into places that feel local, walkable, and centered around family life
In hot, arid climates, outdoor spaces are often abandoned unless thermal comfort and sensory engagement are actively designed. Whether people choose to walk depends on more than basic street proportions, as a route is walked when it is continuously shaded, comfortable underfoot, and rewarding to move along. This first-principles approach to walkability is vividly illustrated at EMAAR – The Heights in Dubai, a vast 750-hectare masterplan where DLR Group translates thoughtful master planning into everyday family living. Rather than allowing the development’s scale to overwhelm residents, the plan organizes over 7,500 homes into an array of intimate neighborhood clusters, each anchored by a central Wellness Club directly sited amid a polycentric open space network spanning 1.9 million square meters. Curvilinear villa layouts, green noise-filtering buffers, neighborhood pockets for dwell or play, and shaded pedestrian routes work alongside continuous blue/green systems to maintain neighborhood intimacy at scale and make wellness feel tangible.
SUMOU in Al Khobar is organized as a live-work-play ecosystem, reducing the need for long-distance movement
Similarly, in mixed-use developments like SUMOU in Al Khobar and LIWAN Najd in Riyadh, DLR Group weaves continuous pedestrian networks and central car-free wadis using tree canopies, vegetated groundcover, water features, and lighter paving surfaces to lower radiant temperatures. To balance density with daily well-being, the team structures these developments around central civic nodes such as schools, mosques, workplaces, and retail destinations, wrapping residential clusters around them so essential daily life sits within a comfortable walk. Elevated green terraces, subtle level changes, and shifting planting densities create a natural gradient between active public plazas and tranquil home environments. By sequencing shade, seating, and framed views, distance across both developments is measured in spatial experience rather than physical exertion, creating places where people naturally want to slow down and linger.
‘In this climate, streets must be both functional and beautiful. We have to push back against the obsolete thinking that it’s simply too hot to walk here,’ notes Shawn Meyers, Middle East Master Planning Director at DLR Group. ‘If people have a tree canopy, a place to rest, or a reason to linger, they’re willing to walk further and engage more fully with their neighborhood — and, more importantly, with their neighbors,’ adds du Toit.
conceived as a car-free, green pedestrian spine, LIWAN Najd in Riyadh’s Granada District connects hospitality, housing, commerce, worship, and community life
TERRAIN, CULTURAL ROOTS, AND REGIONAL AUTHENTICITY
Modulating the monumental scale also demands deference to terrain and local context. At MAAD in Makkah, a mixed-use masterplan designed to balance seasonal pilgrim flows with permanent urban livability, DLR Group used the site’s steep mountainous terrain as an organizing framework rather than flattening the landscape. By concentrating high-density development at lower elevations and tapering massing as the topography rises, built forms merge naturally into the mountain through stepped terraces and landscape-led transitions.
Where developments touch deeply personal or spiritual journeys, architecture must yield to quiet humility. ‘For destinations such as Makkah, the interior design is never intended to become the focal point of the experience — it exists to support the journey taking place within the guest,’ explains Vaida Buchrotaite, Middle East Director of Interior Design at DLR Group. ‘As the architecture merges into the mountains, the interiors continue that story through restrained materiality, gentle spatial layering, and carefully choreographed arrival sequences that encourage moments of reflection and calm.’
natural features such as the surrounding mountains and wadis define movement, density, and urban form
forms, textures, patterns, materials are an extension of the physical terrain and create a continuum of the land’s cultural significance
A similar sensitivity defines how regional heritage is expressed across DLR Group’s projects. At The Point in Abha, traditional Al-Qatt Al-Asiri wall art is not applied as superficial decoration, but distilled into custom textiles, geometric textures, and warm, mineral-toned palettes. Rather than recreating historical styles, the design team abstracts regional patterns and local crafts into modern, bold lifestyle destinations that feel authentic, warm, and deeply rooted in place.
‘We celebrate local culture by infusing our interiors with subtle echoes of regional patterns, craftsmanship, textures, and art rather than applying them literally,’ continues Buchrotaite. ‘These references are paired with contemporary styling, refined detailing, and sometimes even bespoke patterns developed specifically for each project.’
The Point is a vibrant mixed-use development situated in southwestern Saudi Arabia, within the Asir Region, which is well known for its cultural heritage and natural landscapes
THE INTEGRATED STUDIO WORKFLOW
Ensuring that a macro-scale urban vision successfully translates into micro-level sensory touchpoints requires breaking down traditional design silos. ‘For us, integrated design is an active, iterative workflow rather than a passive collaboration,’ notes Shawn Meyers, Middle East Master Planning Director at DLR Group. ‘We can achieve far greater value when the master planners, architects, landscape architects, and interior designers shape the vision together from day one, rather than working in a sequential hand-off.’
By embedding this holistic workflow across every phase, DLR Group proves that even the most ambitious megaprojects can be crafted as intimate, legible spaces where human experience remains the ultimate priority. ‘Bringing all key decision-makers together at project inception creates alignment around a common vision from the outset,’ adds Buchrotaite. ‘Maintaining open dialogue and actively inviting input from every discipline throughout the design process leads to stronger decisions, a more cohesive outcome, and a more collaborative experience for both the team and the client.’
all food and beverage patios and terraces have a clear line of sight toward the central entertainment space
project info:
brand: DLR Group
projects: EMAAR – The Heights (Dubai), MAAD (Makkah), The Point (Abha), SUMOU (Al Khobar) and LIWAN Najd (Riyadh)
interviewees: Shawn Meyers (Middle East Master Planning Director), Vaida Buchrotaite (Middle East Director of Interior Design), Henrique Dias (Middle East Hospitality & Mixed-Use Director) and Stefan du Toit (Design Director, Landscape)
The post DLR Group on translating urban density into intimate neighborhoods in the middle east appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.