Al Ryan Guest House and Majlis

A guest house and a formal majlis for a private client in the Gulf. The guest house is an elliptical ring of vaulted colonnades in pale stone around a courtyard, with a round glazed pavilion and a circular reflecting pool; the rooms behind the colonnades are darker and more intimate, against the bleached light outside.

The formal majlis is one long hall behind a row of pointed arches. Each arch is filled with cast-glass blocks, a screen in the manner of the mashrabiya, so that from outside the building reads as a colonnade and from inside the light comes through the wall. The cast glass fills the arches.

It sits at the far end of the practice's range from Gotland: sculptural, near-monochrome, almost classical. The discipline is the same.