MEAN*

Middle East

Architecture

Network

Regional Knowledge, Given New Form

The Part And The Whole

MEAN* (Middle East Architecture Network) reads what a place already knows about building, in its materials and its ways of making, and gives that knowledge a contemporary form. Riyad Joucka founded the practice in Dubai in 2016.

Rules join the parts and leave each part room to differ.

A joint is made with the same care as the room it belongs to.

Residential

Wellness & Hospitality

Retail & F&B

Cultural & Public

Research

Selected Work

A chair and a house begin the same way: one part, made at full size and held in the hand. Only when it sits right against the next is it allowed to repeat.

Repeat Wellness Club

Barcelona, Spain · Built · 2026

Send Location

Dubai, UAE · Built · 2025

The Migrant Kitchen

New York, USA · Built · 2022

Woven roof canopy and ferry terminal on the Han River in Seoul.

Yeoui-Naru Ferry Terminal

Seoul, South Korea · Proposal · Competition entry · 2017

Limestone arcades and shaded terraces at the proposed Barjeel Art Foundation Museum in Sharjah.

Sharjah Modern

Sharjah, UAE · Proposal · 2019

Visualisation of the proposed members' club in Dubai: interconnected buildings around a central pool and a shared rooftop landscape.

Members Club & Fashion Incubator

Dubai, UAE · Proposal · 2023

Circular courtyard house with arched lattice screens in AlUla.

Cosmos House

AlUla, Saudi Arabia · Proposal · 2022

Interior of the MEAL design innovation and robotic fabrication campus in Dubai.

MEAL* Design Innovation Campus

Dubai, UAE · Proposal · Investment pitch · 2017

Limestone mountain villa with an internal courtyard on Jebel Jais.

House 00

Jebel Jais, Ras Al Khaimah, UAE · Proposal · Schematic design · 2020

Contemporary majlis proposal with fluid printed walls, integrated seating and a roof skylight.

3D Printed Majlis

Abu Dhabi, UAE · Proposal · Schematic design · 2020

Meta-Modular

Dubai, UAE · Proposal · 2023

Deciduous

Dubai, UAE · Built · 2019

Audi Innovation Hub

Dubai, UAE · Built · 2018

Layered reusable kiosk designed for Hermès as a communal retail setting in Dubai.

Le Monde d'Hermès Kiosk

Dubai, UAE · Built · 2022

Luminescents

Dubai, UAE · Built · 2021

CNC-milled Jordanian stone installation representing water scarcity.

ARID

Amman, Jordan · Built · 2017

Slender carbon-fibre shade canopies above integrated public seating.

Penumbra

Dubai, UAE · Proposal · 2023

Desert Pavilion

Wadi Rum, Jordan · Proposal · 2020

Lamella

NEOM, Saudi Arabia · Proposal · 2023

Ribbed 3D-printed Tutuncka lamp generated through a computational design system.

Tutuncka 2.0

Dubai, UAE · Built · Prototype · 2019

Mawj

Dubai, UAE · Built · 2020

Tall gradient 3D-printed floor lamp with a faceted lattice shade.

LATE Floor Lamp

Dubai, UAE · Built · 2021

Boundless Influence

What a place teaches us does not stay there.

UAE

Dubai

Sharjah

Sharjah Modern

Jebel Jais, Ras Al Khaimah

House 00

Abu Dhabi

3D Printed Majlis

Saudi Arabia

AlUla

Cosmos House

NEOM

Lamella

Jordan

Amman

ARID

Wadi Rum

Desert Pavilion

Spain

Barcelona

Repeat Wellness Club

USA

New York

The Migrant Kitchen

South Korea

Seoul

Yeoui-Naru Ferry Terminal

In the details, digital craft gives the smallest joint the same thought as the largest span, yet each answers to the building it completes.

Repeat Wellness Club, Ceramic Wall Details

Repeat Wellness Club

The Migrant Kitchen, Connection Details

Send Location, Octagon Details

Mawj Chair, 3D Printing Process Detail

Le Monde d'Hermès Kiosk

Modulus, 3D Printed Urban Furniture

Research Builds On Material Intelligence

Research here begins where a commission ends, with one part made at full size, a printed clay block or a length of stone. What cracks goes back into the drawing, and what holds goes into the next building.

TED

Reimagining traditional architecture for modern needs

At TED in Dubai in 2025, Riyad Joucka began with a street of houses so alike that only the parked cars told them apart, and ended with a house a family changes part by part.

Riyad Joucka speaking at TED in Dubai, October 2025. Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED

Assembled Identities Phase 2

20th International Architecture Exhibition at
La Biennale di Venezia, 2027

The second phase turns the pavilion into a developer’s showroom. Each visitor builds a home from the same small kit and leaves it standing, and by the last day the floor holds a street of houses, no two alike.

Assembled Identities Phase 1

20th International Architecture Exhibition at
La Biennale di Venezia, 2027

The opening phase starts from the sales brochure, where a family picks a plan from a short list, and asks how homes built in series can still show who lives in them.

Additive Dialogues

Interviews On Printing Buildings, Zayed University Fellowship

Riyad Joucka and Professor Adina Hempel talk with the people who print walls and whole rooms, and ask each of them where the machine stops and the hand takes over.

Permutable Assembly Phase 2

19th International Architecture Exhibition at
La Biennale di Venezia

Walls arrive as concrete parts, the mix carrying crushed shells in place of the coral the coast once built with, and each house is a new arrangement of the same set. After Venice the parts travel home and go up again as a room where people gather.

Permutable Assembly Phase 1

19th International Architecture Exhibition at
La Biennale di Venezia

For a generation that may never own a home, the house is drawn as a kit of parts, so a room can be added when a child arrives and taken away when the children leave.

Live Academy

Live Academy, Designers Teaching Their Tools

Architects teach the scripts they draw with every day, in Grasshopper and Blender, and students learn them online at their own pace.

MEAL*

Middle East Architecture Lab

MEAL*, the research arm of MEAN*, tests its questions by hand: students and young architects build prototypes in its workshops. The campus drawn here holds all of that work.