Exploring how Biophilic & Regenerative Design principles could be applied to the design of public spaces in Dubai
Dubai
Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) & Buildner
Dubai City
2025
Competition Entry
Andrea Zamora, María José Sánchez, Camila Dussan and Clara Helena Guerrero
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What if a city could be designed like a tapestry, stitched together by sun, wind, and water, threaded with memory, and alive with nature and sensory richness?
What if our urban fabric could restore, reconnect, and regenerate?
Can biophilic and regenerative principles shape better cities?
These questions guided “Dubai: The Woven City”, a design proposal developed as a competition entry, rooted in biophilic urbanism and informed by regenerative frameworks like the Living Community Challenge. The project reimagines Dubai not as static infrastructure, but as a living ecosystem, where form, function, and culture are deeply interwoven.
Regenerative multi-scalar approach
The Woven City reimagines urban life as a living tapestry, interlacing climate, culture, and ecology into a regenerative public realm. Developed as a competition entry, the proposal addresses global urban challenges through a Dubai-specific lens, applying biophilic and regenerative design principles to restore connection between people and nature.
Dubai’s rapid growth has produced iconic architecture, yet often at the expense of ecological continuity, climate resilience, and cultural rootedness. This project responds with a framework shaped by Al Sadu, the Bedouin weaving tradition, translating its patterns into layered systems of sun, wind, and water.
The design operates across four scales:
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Micro: street furniture, shading, planting, and water features tailored to microclimates.
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Meso: ecological corridors, sensory plazas, and shaded gathering spaces.
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Macro: integrated green–blue infrastructure and climate-responsive mobility networks.
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Planetary: carbon reduction, biodiversity restoration, and water resilience.
Seven distinct districts emerge, each with its own narrative, from shaded edible gardens and restored dunes, to kinetic facades and reimagined historic cores. Together, they form a modular, adaptable system that can be implemented in phases, enabling continuity without uniformity.
The proposal is ambitious but pragmatic, recognising barriers such as governance fragmentation, maintenance demands, and procurement models. It positions regeneration as an ethic rather than an end state, advocating design as a process of care, cultural respect, and environmental reciprocity.
By weaving ecological systems, social spaces, and cultural memory into one coherent fabric, The Woven City offers not just a vision for Dubai, but a globally relevant model for cities seeking to heal as they grow.
Dubai's vehicular infrastructure dominating the urban landscape
Al Sadu, the Bedouin tradition of weaving.
City's green and blue insfrastructure proposed
Modualr system proposed for Urban Elements
Seven Zones, Seven Narratives
The city is organized into seven interconnected districts, each reflecting a different response to Dubai’s urban and ecological context. A specific character is defined for each of them through the various urban elements, material and planting palette:
Zone 01/02 - Residential: "Gardens of Everyday Life"
Quiet residential rhythms unfold in shared courtyards, flowering paths, and sensory gardens. Sunlight, breeze, and water shape comfort and cohesion, while play zones, shaded seating, edible gardens, and seasonal fountains turn routines into experiences.
Zone 03 - Suburban: 'The Living Dunes"
A threshold between city and desert, celebrating Dubai’s natural heritage. Wind-shaped dunes, native vegetation, and silence frame eco-parks, trails, meditation areas, bird hides, and water-harvesting, reweaving bonds with wilderness.
Zone 04 - Mixed Use: "Oasis of Exchange"
An oasis of renewal, where water drives urban life. Harvested and reused, it irrigates, cools, and activates public space with mist corridors, bioswales, and fountains, softening density with flowing movement and pause.
Zone 05 - Industrial: "Engines of Tomorrow"
Industry reframed as green frontier. Logistics and energy corridors integrate wetlands, solar surfaces, wind-shading, and bioluminescent cool zones, turning infrastructure into regenerative laboratories.
Zone 06 - Mised Use: "Threads of Memory"
Dubai’s cultural core, where sunlight narrates through alleys and shadows. Inspired by Al Sadu weaving, it stitches past and present with public art, performances, storytelling, and shadow play woven into material and geometry.
Zone 07 - High End: "The Senses in Motion"
Luxury and flow converge, shaped by wind as both force and metaphor. Kinetic surfaces, sculptural wind towers, and sound installations choreograph air, blurring indoor/outdoor and fast/serene urban experiences.
