Shoayb Khattab is a UAE-based architectural photographer, filmmaker and architect who trained as a designer before turning the camera on the buildings themselves. He says his work has received more than 60 international awards, and among the commissions he counts as career-defining is photographing the Kaaba in Mecca and Al-Rawdah Al-Sharifa in the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. Alongside his own practice he runs the production studio MassHouse and holds founding roles in several architecture and creative ventures.
Some careers are built by changing direction. Others are built by realising that the path you thought you had left behind was guiding you all along. For Shoayb, architecture was never just a degree or a profession — it became the lens through which he reads the world. He left full-time architectural practice to pursue photography, and then found that architecture was the thing he kept photographing anyway.
A childhood of drawings and imagination
Long before he studied architecture, Shoayb was fascinated by drawing. He won his first national drawing competition in second grade, and around the same time became absorbed by the floor plans his father, a civil engineer, brought home — tracing the technical drawings on tracing paper, then drawing the family house from memory, purely from imagination.
By the age of ten or eleven he had taught himself basic home-design software. When his aunt was building a house and wanted changes made to her architect’s plans, Shoayb redesigned it himself. The architect who received the revised drawings dismissed them, saying they looked like a student had produced them — not realising they had been drawn by a child. The house was built exactly as Shoayb had redesigned it. It was the first sign that he could shape real spaces, years before he formally studied architecture.
Studying architecture, and discovering a second passion
Choosing architecture at university felt natural, and he fell in love not only with buildings but with the thinking behind them: proportion, composition, geometry, light, and the emotional experience a space creates. He graduated with excellence honours and received the Best Scientific Award among all engineering colleges at his university.
During his first year of architecture school, another interest arrived quietly when a close friend introduced him to photography. It began as a parallel creative outlet and gradually became something much larger, until he made the difficult decision to leave his full-time architectural career and pursue photography professionally.
The subject he found himself photographing most was architecture itself. Rather than standing in front of a building and pressing the shutter, he reads the building first, the way an architect would — studying proportion, movement, composition, light and the story the structure is trying to tell. That architectural literacy is what separates his images from conventional building photography.
Finding a creative identity
The hardest part of his early career was not technique. It was identity. Like most photographers starting out, he shot everything — portraits, landscapes, events, architecture, whatever came his way. The variety brought experience but not clarity, and none of it was distinctly his.
It took real failure before he understood that narrowing his focus to architecture was not a limitation but the thing that let his own voice come through for the first time. Committing fully to architectural photography became one of the defining decisions of his career.
Photographing the Kaaba: a career-defining commission
Shoayb has worked with globally recognised names he once looked up to from a distance. Yet the commission to photograph the Kaaba, at the heart of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and Al-Rawdah Al-Sharifa in the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, remains the achievement he values most.
The assignment demanded rare access and meticulous planning. The Kaaba is among the busiest places on earth and almost never empty; a brief window in which the surrounding area was clear allowed him to photograph it from angles, in light and with a stillness that are almost never seen. For Shoayb, the project was where everything aligned at once — the technical skill, the architectural eye and a genuine sense of purpose.
Building more than a photography career
Shoayb works under his own name as his creative identity — the photographer and director behind the work — while running MassHouse, the production studio that delivers architectural and branded visual content, photography, film and communications for architecture firms, developers and hospitality brands across the region. As he puts it, he is the artist and MassHouse is the studio that produces at scale around him.
Beyond that he is building a wider portfolio of ventures. He is part of the founding team behind Alifba, a professional screenwriting application built natively for Arabic rather than treating the language as an afterthought. He is involved in BinaForm, an architecture content and education platform rooted in the Arab world. And he continues to design through Khattab Architects, a boutique studio focused on high-end residential work.
Choosing focus over variety
One idea sits at the centre of how he works: focus is not a limitation, it is what gives creativity direction. He would rather be fully invested in fewer, better-aligned commissions than spread thin across many, and prefers clients who share his standard on quality over winning every brief.
Changing how the world sees regional architecture
His ambition reaches well past personal recognition. Shoayb wants to be remembered as proof that local and regional architecture deserves a place on the global stage. His first major recognition came for the House of Wisdom in Sharjah — the Foster + Partners-designed library and cultural centre that opened in 2021 — a local landmark that earned global design recognition. That mattered to him precisely because it showed the work did not need to be somewhere else in order to matter.
It is an argument the region has been making on several fronts at once, from the institutions driving the Gulf’s cultural economy to individual creators insisting their stories travel, among them filmmaker Nayla Al Khaja and homegrown brands such as The QR Collection building towards international recognition. His own goal is not simply to record buildings but to document them as visual storytelling — capturing emotion, culture, design and artistic intention rather than physical structure alone.
The larger ambition goes further still. Shoayb wants to help make architecture something people genuinely prioritise — not only professionals and clients, but the public. He wants to educate people about architecture and show its beauty in a way that makes them stop and actually see the buildings around them, the way visitors already do inside the UAE’s galleries and cultural districts. That starts in this region, but the ambition is not local: he wants the impact to reach a global scale.
Advice to the next generation
If he could speak to his younger self, the message would be direct: stop photographing everything. Find the one thing you understand at a deeper level than most people, and commit to it completely before worrying about variety or versatility.
The confusion he carried for years — in his work, in his confidence, in how he saw himself — was never solved by shooting more. It was solved the moment he picked a lane and went all in.
Where to follow Shoayb Khattab
Shoayb shares his architectural photography and film work on Instagram and on LinkedIn.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Shoayb Khattab?
Shoayb Khattab is an architect, architectural photographer and filmmaker who documents architecture across the Middle East through visual storytelling, and who runs the production studio MassHouse.
What makes Shoayb Khattab’s photography different?
He approaches every project as an architect first, reading a building’s proportions, design and spatial experience before taking the photograph.
What is Shoayb Khattab’s biggest career achievement?
He considers photographing the Kaaba in Mecca and Al-Rawdah Al-Sharifa in Medina the most significant commission of his career, because of the rare access it required and its personal meaning.
What businesses is Shoayb Khattab involved in?
He works under his own name as his creative identity and leads MassHouse. He is also part of the founding team behind Alifba, is involved in BinaForm, and designs through Khattab Architects.
What lesson has shaped Shoayb Khattab’s career the most?
That specialisation produces stronger creative work than trying to do everything. Committing to architectural photography is what gave him a distinctive identity.
What impact does Shoayb Khattab hope to leave?
He hopes to raise the global standing of architecture from the Arab world, and to get more people — not only professionals — to notice and value the buildings around them.
