DESERT BY DESIGN is a UAEU-led annual architecture and urbanism competition that advances architectural identity, climate-responsive design and desert urbanism through real cultural and environmental contexts. The Al Ain 2026 Edition asks participants to engage with one of the UAE’s most layered desert-oasis contexts and to imagine how contemporary design can extend its identity responsibly.

The competition is not an exercise in copying heritage forms. It is an invitation to understand the intelligence of place: shade, thresholds, water, landform, materiality, public life, memory, hospitality, movement and environmental adaptation. Participants are expected to transform this understanding into a clear, spatial and buildable design idea.