THE FUSE

Arabian Ranches, the master-planned community on the edge of Dubai, trades in Mediterranean and Spanish pastiche—the kind of terracotta-roofed villa that has become shorthand for aspirational suburbia. Inside one of these houses, in the gated enclave of Savannah, Marie Claire Mrad has undertaken something quietly subversive. The interior architect gutted the space without touching the bones, shifting a borrowed European design language for something more disciplined: contemporary Japanese restraint.