Dubai’s ever-evolving cityscape comes into sharp, thoughtful focus in The City in Its Details: The Past and Future in Dubai’s Architecture, a new photography exhibition that opened on 4 April and runs through 10 May 2026.
Through the lens of architect and photographer Robert Powers, the show offers an intimate study of the patterns that quietly shape the city’s identity, with images taken between 2013 and 2025 to document walkable historic areas of Dubai.
Photographed in Deira and Bur Dubai, the works document some of the city’s most walkable and historically rich areas. The exhibition is an exploration of visual rhythms found in streets, structures, and infrastructure that, over time, give a city its character.
In Dubai, these patterns have emerged through successive waves of development and Powers traces them with a careful eye, moving between older neighbourhoods and contemporary builds. His images shift fluidly from apartments and houses to large-scale developments, revealing moments where buildings seem to stack and overlap, or where perforated facades hint at the layered lives within.
A recurring motif throughout the exhibition is the concrete breeze block, a hallmark of mid-century optimism. Once a practical solution for allowing light and air while maintaining privacy, these blocks also introduced striking geometric patterns across facades. As architecture scaled up, those same rhythms found new expression in angular balconies stretching across entire elevations.
Since the 1990s, Dubai has positioned itself as a site of architectural experimentation. Beyond its globally recognised landmarks, everyday structures, shops, mosques, malls and bridges, embrace bold geometries and jagged forms inspired by Islamic patterns. Screen walls, in particular, stand out as both functional and expressive, offering privacy, shade and identity while continuing a long tradition of pattern making in the region.
Shatha Almutawa, founder and director of Kutubna Cultural Center, said: "This exhibition is about finding beauty in overlooked and unexpected places… It makes us see what would otherwise be invisible to us. When old buildings appear in these photographs, for example, their age is part of their beauty. We begin to see stories of the people who live in old houses and walk down old streets from the cables, the chips on walls, and unexpected additions to buildings. The photographs visually make the argument that what might appear to some as deterioration is in fact rich history. Documenting the beauty of this layered history is asserting that old buildings indeed have value and deserve to continue standing.”
The exhibition is on view at Kutubna Cultural Center in Nadd Al Hamar, Dubai, and admission is free.
Visit: kutubna.ae
