Basim KayalArchitect

Residential & Commercial Architecture

Building
timeless legacies

Thirty years of turning land, ideas and ambitions into buildings — designed, permitted, detailed and delivered by one studio.

30+Years
200+Projects
Private HousesInteriorsExtensionsPlanning & PermitsSite Management
01The practice

The person who draws it is the person on site

Basim Kayal has practised for over thirty years — private homes, residential and apartment buildings, and commercial spaces, across Israel and beyond.

His involvement begins before the first line is drawn. He studies the land, establishes what can actually be built on it, works the planning and approvals through, and develops a design around the way the people who will use it want to live or work. Then he stays: through tender, through construction, on site when it matters.

The studio is deliberately small — three people, with architecture, interiors, permitting and site management all under one roof. It means the drawings that leave the studio are the drawings that get built, and there is nobody to hand the difficult questions to.

Basim Kayal

Principal Architect — Est. 1994

Meet the studio
Basim Kayal at his drawing table
Behind the designFig. 01

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Years in practice

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Projects delivered

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Disciplines in-house

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People in the studio

02What we do

Five disciplines, one continuous conversation

From the first read of the land to the day the keys change hands, the work stays in one studio — which is the only reliable way to keep an idea intact through permitting and construction.

Private houses, residential and apartment buildings, and commercial spaces. Resolved on their site, in their light, around the way the people inside them will actually live or work.

  • Land & feasibility
  • Concept & massing
  • Construction drawings

The building carried through to the last fixture — layout, joinery, material and light specified by the same hand that shaped the shell, so the inside is not a second, later argument.

  • Room planning
  • Materials & finishes
  • Joinery & lighting

Work to buildings that already exist: opening up a plan, adding a floor, replacing a rear wall with glass. The hardest kind of project to design, and the kind thirty years is most useful for.

  • Survey & structure
  • Planning consent
  • Phasing around the family

Establishing what a plot will carry before anyone commits to it, then taking the drawings through submission and approval. The stage that decides whether a project happens at all.

  • Building rights & feasibility
  • Detailed plans & submission
  • Approvals & authorities

Programme, budget and quality held from setting out the building to occupancy, with one office answerable for all three and the architect on site through completion.

  • Tender & builder selection
  • Site supervision
  • Cost control & handover
03Selected works

A short list from a long practice

2017 — 2024

01

House in Kafr Yasif

House in Kafr Yasif, Kafr Yasif
Private house·Kafr Yasif·2024
02

Building in Judeida-Makr

Building in Judeida-Makr, Judeida-Makr
Residential building·Judeida-Makr·2023
03

House in Abu Snan

House in Abu Snan, Abu Snan
House & interiors·Abu Snan·2022
04

House in Sakhnin

House in Sakhnin, Sakhnin
Private house·Sakhnin·2021
05

Building in Tamra

Building in Tamra, Tamra
Residential building·Tamra·2019
06

House in Shefa-Amr

House in Shefa-Amr, Shefa-Amr
Private house·Shefa-Amr·2017

These are private homes and buildings; further work, drawings and references are available on request.

Great architecture is about more than design. It's about creating spaces that enhance life.
Basim Kayal — Principal Architect
Ground floor plan of a private house
Ground floor plan — private house, GalileeFig. 02
04Process

How the work is made

Four stages, in this order, on every project — from a single room reworked to a new building on an empty plot.

  1. 01

    Listen

    Every project starts with the client, the land and the constraints — and with more questions than answers. Nothing is drawn until we understand how you actually want to use it.

    • Brief
    • Land study
    • Feasibility
  2. 02

    Explore

    Sketches, massing studies, models. Options are put on the table and argued over in the open until one of them is clearly right for this plot and these people.

    • Concept
    • Massing
    • Models
  3. 03

    Refine

    Proportion, light and material are tuned until the drawing set reads as a single coherent argument rather than a collection of decisions.

    • Detail design
    • Materials
    • Drawing set
  4. 04

    Deliver

    We stay on site through completion. The last ten percent is the whole difference between a building that works and one that lasts.

    • Tender
    • Supervision
    • Handover
05Get in touch

Tell us where you are in the process

A plot, a sketch, or nothing but an idea for what you want to build. We'll tell you honestly what it takes to build it — and whether it's worth building.

Send a message

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