Sumayya Vally to design Dubai art foundation around the "memory of a house"

Elie Khouri Art Foundation by Sumayya Vally

South African architect Sumayya Vally is designing a permanent home for the Elie Khouri Art Foundation (EKAF), which will be located within a renovated villa in Dubai.

Set to be built in the Jumeirah 1 development in Dubai, the foundation’s home will be located in a former villa, which will be dramatically overhauled by Vally – principal of architecture studio Counterspace.

Sumayya Vally is designing the Elie Khouri Art Foundation in Dubai

“I think of buildings as having many lives,” said Vally. “At EKAF, we begin with a house that has already held a world within it. Its doors, cornices, balustrades, and particular ways of receiving people and separating rooms contain the traces of another life,” she continued.

“I am interested in what happens when we take these intimate geometries and give them a new public scale: when the architecture of a room becomes the architecture of a city-facing facade, and the memory of a house becomes the beginnings of an institution.”

Although few details of the design have been revealed, a render shows what appears to be a three-storey building with a light pink textured facade.

Lines across the facade appear to suggest fragments of the previous building, with recognisable shapes including doorways visible. Geometric holes punched in the facade will reveal activities taking place inside.

EKAF was established by Lebanese-French businessman Elie Khouri and its permanent home is planned to open in 2028. The foundation will contain gallery space to show its permanent collection and will also include space for temporary exhibits.

“I hope that artists, designers, researchers and makers from the region will bring other imaginations into the work, and that the institution will continue to acquire forms and meanings we cannot yet anticipate,” added Vally.

Designer of the Serpentine Pavilion in 2021, Vally was named emerging architect of the year at Dezeen Awards in 2023 and one of Time magazine’s 100 leaders of the future in 2021.