Cloud Padel
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Cloud Padel explores a hybrid typology where sports facilities function as social infrastructure. Rather than treating padel courts as purely functional boxes, the design integrates spectator zones, café, and community gathering spaces - recognizing that the viewing experience is as important as playing.
The project combines two regulation padel courts with a café, reception and retail spaces, and mezzanine viewing areas that create layered spatial experiences. Circulation is choreographed to encourage social interaction, with pathways that connect courts, spectator zones, and hospitality spaces into a continuous sequence.
Rather than designing a sports facility with an attached café, Cloud Padel positions itself as a gathering space that happens to include courts, a civic amenity as much as athletic infrastructure.
Credits
Client
Confidential
Collaborator
Area
811 m² / 2 Padel Courts
Status
Concept Design
Visualisation
Sml Studio Architecture
Cloud Padel Concept Plan
The design balances four distinct material and spatial strategies. Urban elements frame the city skyline and capture Dubai's energy, creating a sense of community through orientation and visibility. Refined industrial language, minimal, tactile, and warmth, provides the structural framework and enclosure. Organic qualities soften the athletic program through enveloping materials, rounded forms, and grounded textures that integrate landscape and planting. Local craftsmanship, materials, and detailing create a sense of place specific to Dubai's context.
These four strategies aren't separate zones but interwoven throughout the design; the lightweight "cloud" canopy (refined industrial) shelters integrated planters (organic), while framing views to the skyline (urban) and employing regional construction methods (local). The result is a sports facility that feels both contemporary and rooted, open yet protected.
London
+44 7588 623636
Vancouver
+1 604 725 1028
© Sml Studio Architecture 2026.
All Rights Reserved.