The Floating Retreat

The Floating Retreat is a study in suspension. It starts with one question. What does it mean to sleep on a mountain without owning it?

The project is a place to stay in the Sharjah mountains. It draws on the practice of cliff camping. The Retreat asks what happens when a night on the rock face is opened to the general public. It was developed with Shurooq, the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority.

Probing models

The work began with models, not with a brief. explored new architectural spaces that morph and hold no fixed boundaries. The aim was to start a new kind of imagination, for children and adults alike.

Many themes were brought forward. Each was tested and judged. One was then pushed to its full potential, until it failed. The exercise was repeated until the results made sense. The Floating Retreat is what remained.

The room

Small rooms hang from the cliff face. A lightweight bridge structure leads to them. Each room holds what a night needs: a bed, electricity and heating. Nothing more.

The room is small. The space below it is vast. This is scale you feel in the body before you read it in a drawing. The edge of the room becomes the edge of the mountain.

Arrival is guided. An operator receives each guest and walks them to their room. By day, the mountain is used, not only seen. Guests climb. They trek through the wadis. The ground becomes a route, a wall and a horizon.

The season

The Retreat follows the calendar of the place. It opens in November and closes in May. When the summer heat arrives, it rests. Time is part of the design, as much as the bridge or the room.

The people

The Retreat was imagined as a way to bring people to the region. It aims to bring new life to the local community through tourism. Visitors come to discover the mountains and to learn their culture and heritage. It is designed for families.

The brief also holds local food, a small on-site shop for souvenirs and a cycling platform. Guests can taste the region, take something of it home, and see the mountains on two wheels.

The memory

Omran Alowais names the feeling the Retreat is built for:

“The absence of stress; serenity. The quality of calm such as the experienced in places with mainly natural features and activities, free from disturbance from manmade ones.”

A night hung above a wadi is not easily forgotten. The Retreat is less a hotel than an instrument for that memory. Like much of 's work, it is made to be tested, argued with and carried forward.

The project has been featured in Architectural Digest, designboom and Domus.

As featured inArchitectural DigestdesignboomDomus