The most common housing unit in Abu Dhabi is something called the “villa.”

Now, if you live in the U.S., you hear “villa” and you’re probably thinking “posh,” maybe “Italianate.”

But in Abu Dhabi, the villa can range from kinda nice to seriously down-market. And it almost always is oddly, almost randomly ornate — ish.

Take a look at these three in my neighborhood.

The first is across the street from where we live. It is almost pink, and this photo, taken from the front just before sunset, shows that all these windows face the pitiless Abu Dhabi sun. And how about the strange ornamentation? Indian, perhaps? Arabian? Noveau fortress style, with the walls around the front?

The second is a villa around the corner from the first. About the same age. Again, note the strange flourishes. What is that elevator-shaft-like thing right in the middle of it?

The third is the villa they are getting close to finishing (finally) right next to us. The one that has generate all the construction noise. Note that it is (thankfully) almost coherent in a no-problem-with-that straightforward way. No south Asia rococo going on. And note that it “only” two stories. Most are three, and often they are four.

(And the pile of bricks, to the left, are about to go down in a little patio-like area in front of the villa.)

The thing to remember about the villa in the UAE, is that it houses one family … almost never.  The first two villas, above … I’m just gonna guess those are sliced into a dozen apartments. And they will be laid out most bizarrely. Maybe 20 feet wide and 60 deep with bathrooms at either end and a kitchen in the middle, and a couple of big square rooms. Or it could bend in the middle, and take in a window in the back …

I’m hoping the one at the bottom, right next to where I live, accommodates “only” six or eight families, because then we won’t have quite as many people coming and going up the cul-de-sac.

I know very little about architecture. Clearly. But I would like to meet the guys who draw up these things and say, “What the heck?” I imagine them driving around town, and seeing some monstrosity like the top two, and saying, “Now that is a really stylish villa!”

What are they basing that on? The most queer flourishes? The greatest number of units they managed to jam inside?

Anyway, if you have any thoughts about what is going on here … feel free to contribute.

To me, these buildings are sorta crazy. Oversized, with inexplicably complicated facades and just plain nuts, once you get inside and see how they have sliced them into individual units.

But those are the types of buildings that dominate the housing market, on Abu Dhabi Island. Unlike Dubai, up the coast, we have very few high-rise residential apartments. The kinds with the sorts of indoor amenities (pool, gym, social room) that would be really handy in a place with such brutal heat.

Instead, we have these squat things that are far, far less enticing than their size or name (a villa!) might suggest. Taking up the interior of most of the central-city blocks. One after the other. Some old and rundown, some new like these. And most of us live in one of them.

Odd. But they paid somebody to make them like that.