Architecture
Houses, majalis and small public buildings, drawn from the plot outward.
Diriyah · Est. 2014
Mud, light,and the long shadow.
Atelier Nakhla is an architecture and design studio in Diriyah. We build in the grammar of Najd — thick walls, shaded courtyards, and openings placed for the way the light actually moves.
The stance · نخلة
2014Founded
42Projects
07Awards
The stance
We do not decorate a facade and call it heritage. We start from the plot, the sun and the wind, and let the plan find its own courtyard — then the walls follow, honest about the mud they are made of.
Nakhla means palm — the tree that shades the courtyard and marks the water. Our drawings begin the same way: with shade first, then the room around it.
Four disciplines, one hand
Interior architecture
Rooms that belong to their walls — plaster, palm-wood, and honest light.
Courtyards & landscape
The shaded heart of every project: water, palm and a place to sit late.
Heritage conservation
Reading old mud-brick fabric and repairing it without erasing its age.
Selected works
A few we are proud of
01
Courtyard House, Al-Bujairi
A four-bedroom house folded around a single deep courtyard, its rammed-earth walls doing the cooling the old way.
2023Diriyah
02The Bujairi Majlis
A detached majlis with a palm-wood ceiling and triangular openings, sized so the evening light reaches the far cushion.
2022Diriyah
03Wadi Hanifa Retreat
A low earth pavilion at the palm line, opening to the wadi with a shaded veranda that never sees direct sun.
2023Wadi Hanifa
How a Nakhla building thinks
Shade before glass
We shade an opening before we glaze it. The courtyard, the mashrabiya and the deep reveal do most of the work; the air-conditioner does the rest quietly.
Honest mass
A wall should look as heavy as it is. We work in mud-brick, rammed earth and lime plaster, and we let the material read on both faces.
The courtyard breathes
Every plan turns inward around a shaded court. It cools the house, gathers the family, and gives the palm somewhere to stand.
They gave us a modern house that our grandmother would have recognised as home.