Design Quarter: Meraas Builds Residences Inside Dubai's Creative Hub
Design Quarter is a residential project by Meraas Holding in Dubai Design District (d3), offering apartments and duplexes across three buildings. One, two, and three-bedroom apartments make up most of the mix, with three-bedroom duplexes available in Buildings A and B. Construction started in May 2023, and completion is scheduled for February 2027.
What Living in d3 Actually Means
Dubai Design District sits between Business Bay and the Ras Al Khor area, with direct access to Al Khail Road. Downtown Dubai is about 10 minutes by car. DIFC is roughly the same distance.
d3 was built as a hub for fashion, design, and creative industry. The district runs to studios, showrooms, art galleries, and restaurants rather than the mixed-use retail common to most Dubai residential areas. For someone working in creative industries, media, or architecture, the address carries professional utility alongside its residential appeal. For a lifestyle buyer, the restaurant density, gallery calendar, and proximity to the Creek waterfront provide a different draw. For investors, d3 draws a tenant base from the design and creative sector concentrated in the district, rather than the broad corporate pool of nearby Business Bay.
What AED 1.75M to AED 6.6M Covers
The price range spans nearly four times from bottom to top. That spread reflects a genuinely wide mix of unit sizes and formats, not just a single product at different floors.
One-bedroom apartments start from AED 1,750,000 and run from around 800 sq ft to just under 1,500 sq ft across the three buildings. The largest one-bedrooms at the top of that size range offer unusual volume for the price bracket in this district.
Two-bedroom apartments start from AED 3,049,000, with floor areas between 1,157 and 2,508 sq ft. Building C introduces two-bedroom units above 2,500 sq ft. These sit at the same starting price as the compact two-bedrooms in Buildings A and B, which means the per-square-foot cost on the larger units is materially lower.
Three-bedroom units start from AED 6,028,000. The duplexes in Buildings A and B range from 2,752 to 3,324 sq ft. Three-bedroom apartments in Building C reach up to 2,954 sq ft. The top of the range is AED 6,613,000. At this end, buyers are paying for scale and location. The choice between a duplex and a large-format apartment at comparable prices comes down to preference for split-level living versus a single floor plan.
One Price Floor, Multiple Footprints
A consistent feature across the unit structure is that the starting price within each bedroom category does not change with size. All one-bedroom configurations start at AED 1,750,000 regardless of whether the unit is 800 sq ft or 1,400 sq ft. The same holds for most two-bedroom units, where Building B variants from 1,157 to 2,508 sq ft all start at AED 3,049,000. For a buyer targeting the larger layouts within the same bedroom tier, the sq-ft value difference is significant.
Getting In at 10% Down
| Phase | Share |
|---|---|
| Down payment | 10% |
| During construction | 50% |
| At handover | 40% |
The 10% down payment translates to AED 175,000 on the entry-level unit. That is a low cash requirement for a project at this location and price level. The 50% during construction runs over the remaining months to February 2027, and the 40% at handover is the large back-end commitment in this structure.
February 2027 Is Close
Construction began in May 2023 and is tracking toward a February 2027 handover, which is under nine months away from mid-2026. Late-stage off-plan entry carries significantly less execution risk than buying at the groundbreaking phase. The compressed remaining timeline also means the construction-phase payments run down quickly before the handover balance falls due.