The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a future long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment featuring a far detector with 70 kT of liquid argon (LAr). The near detector complex, situated at Fermilab, includes a LAr detector, NDLAr, that is critical for constraining systematic uncertainties via in situ measurements to enable precision studies of neutrino oscillations. Challenging event pile-up from the world’s most intense 1.2 MW neutrino beam will be mitigated by combination of modularised detector approach and state-of-the-art readout technologies. True 3D pixel-based charge readout capabilities combined with high-timing resolution of the light readout will eliminate ambiguities that would otherwise arise in conventional LAr detectors. This talk will describe the novel design of the detector and its subsystems, highlighting key performance results from single-module commissioning of the NDLAr 2×2 Demonstrator, an NDLAr prototype that will record first DUNE neutrino data.