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Reading time: 6 minOMNIYAT ran an international competition for its boldest office tower yet, and three world-renowned design teams lost it. The winner was gad, a studio from Istanbul. The result, Lumena, is a 260-metre tower built around a single clever idea: move the core off to one side, and give every floor a 270-degree view of Dubai.
The most telling fact about Lumena is not in OMNIYAT’s brochure. It is this: to design it, OMNIYAT held an international competition, and the studio that won was not one of the famous Western names you might expect. It was Gad, an architecture practice from Istanbul.
That is a good story, and it deserves to lead, because OMNIYAT is not a developer that commissions lightly. This is the company that gave Dubai The Opus by the late Zaha Hadid, and brought Foster + Partners and other global names to the Gulf. So when OMNIYAT opens a competition for its most ambitious commercial project to date, and a Turkish studio beats three world-renowned teams to it, the win means something. Lumena is a 260-metre, 48-storey office tower on Sheikh Zayed Road, where Business Bay meets Downtown Dubai, and it is the work of a studio most of its future tenants will never have heard of.
By the time you read this, incidentally, it is already sold out; it recorded Business Bay’s highest total sales value on launch, some AED 3.4 billion, with completion scheduled for Q4 2029. But the commercial success is the least interesting thing about it. The architecture is better than the marketing lets on, and it comes down to one decision.
Who gad are
Before the building, the studio, because it is the surprise at the centre of the project.
gad, a global Architectural Development, was founded in 1994 in Istanbul by the Turkish architect Gökhan Avcıoğlu, and now works from studios in Istanbul, New York and Lisbon. Over three decades it has delivered more than 350 projects and collected a shelf of international awards, but it has never been a household name in the Gulf’s glossy tower market. On 7 April 2025, gad won the international competition for Lumena, beating three globally recognised design teams; the detailed design development and construction documentation was then carried out by Atkins, the executive architect.
This matters beyond trivia. Dubai’s landmark skyline was built, overwhelmingly, by a small roster of Western super-practices. Lumena is a quiet sign that the roster is widening, that a developer as demanding as OMNIYAT will hand its flagship tower to a studio from Istanbul on the strength of the idea rather than the letterhead. It is the same shift visible in Riyadh, where a studio from Tbilisi is shaping the Saudi capital. The talent building the Gulf is arriving from everywhere now, and Lumena is Dubai’s version of that story.
The one idea: move the core, and free the view
Here is the design decision the original coverage flattens into “slender form and cantilevered structures,” and it is the whole building.
Most office towers put the lift-and-services core dead in the centre of the floor plate. It is structurally easy and spatially dull: it plants a solid block in the middle of every floor and pushes the usable space out to the edges as a ring. gad did the opposite. Lumena is built on a cross-shaped floor plan with the core pushed off-centre, to the non-view side of the building.
That single move does two things at once. It reduces the visual bulk of the tower; the cross-plan reads as slimmer and more articulated than a fat rectangular slab, which is why the building looks so light on the skyline. And, more importantly for the people inside, pushing the core to one edge opens up the other side completely, giving each floor a 270-degree panoramic sweep of light and view, across the Burj Khalifa, Downtown and out toward Jumeirah Beach, instead of the usual view carved up by a central core.
This is the difference between an architectural idea and a marketing feature. The “clarity” and “lightness” OMNIYAT’s founder Mahdi Amjad describes are not adjectives applied to a render; they are the direct result of where the core sits. Move the core, free the view, slim the silhouette; everything else in the building follows from that one decision.
A garden that climbs the tower
The second genuine idea is the greenery, and again it is more specific than “biophilic design.”
Rather than dropping a few planters on a terrace, gad ran a staggered vertical garden system up the height of the building, planting that grows organically along the tower so that each floor gets its own landscaped balcony. The green is structural to the concept, not decorative: it climbs the facade in a shifting rhythm, softening the glass, shading the interior, and giving every level a pocket of planting rather than reserving the garden for a lucky few.
It is the tower-scale version of an instinct running through the best new Gulf architecture, that the way to make a glass building bearable in this climate is to break its surface, filter its light and bring shade and planting up off the ground. Where a residential tower reworks the mashrabiya or the courtyard, Lumena reworks the garden and stretches it vertically up 48 floors.
The workplace as ecosystem
On top of those two ideas sits the programme, and here OMNIYAT’s hospitality pedigree shows.
Lumena offers 91 customisable shell-and-core units across more than 582,000 sq ft of office space, with rear-core layouts, minimal columns and 3-metre ceilings for adaptability and calm. But the amenities are what place it in its own category. At the summit sits the Sky Theatre, part auditorium, part sanctuary, intended for leadership summits and launches, with views across the Burj Khalifa and Downtown, alongside a Sky Pool and biophilic landscaping. An Executive Wellness Suite handles training, recovery and mental-health facilities; an Executive Club offers private lounges and concierge service drawn from OMNIYAT’s five-star track record at The Opus and Enara. A landscaped podium carries six curated retail concepts, wellness facilities and fine dining that open onto the wider Business Bay and Downtown community rather than sealing themselves off.
The sustainability credentials are being pursued at the top tier: LEED Platinum, WELL Platinum, WiredScore and SmartScore, covering environmental performance, occupant well-being and digital infrastructure. The name gathers the whole ambition into one word: Lumena, from the Latin lumen (light) and the Japanese ena (a blessing), clarity and aspiration, folded together.
Frequently asked questions
What is Lumena by OMNIYAT? A 260-metre, 48-storey ultra-luxury office tower on Sheikh Zayed Road, between Business Bay and Downtown Dubai, developed by OMNIYAT. It offers 91 shell-and-core units across 582,000+ sq ft, with completion scheduled for Q4 2029.
Who designed it? gad (Global Architectural Development), an Istanbul-founded studio led by Gökhan Avcıoğlu, which won an international competition for the project in April 2025. Atkins served as executive architect for design development and construction documentation.
What makes the design distinctive? A cross-shaped floor plan with the core pushed off-centre to the non-view side, reducing the tower’s visual bulk while giving every floor a 270-degree panoramic view, and a staggered vertical garden that climbs the facade, giving each floor a landscaped balcony.
What amenities does it have? A summit-level Sky Theatre, a Sky Pool, an Executive Wellness Suite, an Executive Club, and a podium with six retail concepts and fine dining. It is pursuing LEED Platinum, WELL Platinum, WiredScore and SmartScore certification.
Is it still available? No, Lumena sold out, recording Business Bay’s highest total sales value on launch (around AED 3.4 billion). OMNIYAT has since launched a follow-on, Lumena Alta.
Final thoughts
Strip away the language of “visionaries” and “recalibration,” and Lumena is a more interesting building than its own marketing suggests. It is a tower whose lightness is not a style but a consequence of a core moved to one side, a plan bent into a cross, a garden sent climbing up the facade. Every good thing about it traces back to a couple of clear structural decisions rather than a pile of features.
And it was designed by a studio from Istanbul that beat three of the world’s best to the commission. In a city whose skyline was written almost entirely by a handful of Western practices, that may be the most forward-looking thing about Lumena, not the Sky Theatre or the wellness suite, but the quiet fact of who won.
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