Dar Al-Mawj
The interiors of a coastal residence in Tripoli, designed by DARA Architects as a sequence of soft-radius white volumes wrapped around courtyards. DIUM carried the interior architecture, finishes, joinery, lighting, and furniture — the ground-floor loop of living, dining, kitchen, family bedrooms, and guest suite around the central court and pool, and the entertainment hall, guest bedroom, and spa sequence above — so that the inside of the house continues its shell rather than furnishing it.
The architecture’s curves are carried into the ceiling. Above the living spaces the soffit is sculpted into flowing white ribs that gather the light from the court and the roof openings, and the floor beneath is a single pale stone, so that the house reads as one carved volume rather than a set of finished spaces. Within it, division is done by sheer curtains, by the trees standing in the light-wells, and by a few dark surfaces placed where the eye needs to rest. The sea is admitted in chosen slices; the court is admitted everywhere.
DIUM / Dar Al-MawjOne carved volume, not a set of finished spaces.
The court
The house is lived around its court. Living, dining, and kitchen are set in a loop around the water, open to it through full-height glass and closed to the road beyond, so that the family’s day is spent facing inward, in light that arrives from above and from the garden rather than from the street.
The ceiling
The ceiling does the work that walls usually do. Its ribs flow from one space to the next and open into rooflights where the trees stand, so that the plan is read from the soffit as much as from the floor, and no partition is needed to say where living ends and dining begins.
Above
The upper level is the house’s second nature. Galleries and bridges look down into the court, the entertainment hall and a guest bedroom sit away from the family’s floor, and the spa sequence ends at the raised pool, whose glass edge brings the water’s light down into the void below.
Working together