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Ornamental by Lameice is glassware that refuses to fade into the background. Vibrant, charming and playful, the pieces are pure showstoppers. Founder Lameice Abu Aker began the brand amid Covid in 2021.
Celebrated for reimagining classical design through a contemporary Arab lens, AlJoaib unveils a project uniting traditional craftsmanship with mid-century, sculptural influences. The result, she tells us, carries her unmistakable signature.
Editor's Pick
Architect, artist, weaver, wanderer—Abeer Seikaly refuses to be just one thing. From Bedouin tents to maritime nets, the Jordanian-Palestinian maker transforms movement, memory, and material into living, breathing architectures of curiosity.
At the forefront of supertall innovation, architect Gordon Gill is redefining what a kilometre-high skyscraper can be — balancing extreme height with environmental performance, human comfort and cultural meaning in Saudi Arabia’s landmark Jeddah Tower.
India-based Studio VDGA makes its architecture foray in Dubai with a resplendent family home, dubbed House of Courtyards, that's inspired by the traditional architecture of the Arabian Gulf but raised to a sublime degree.
Yasmine Sfar and Mehdi Kebaier are the creative duo behind Altin Studio. They aptly named their brand after the Arabic word ‘Al-Tin’ meaning earth (or clay) as a means to reflect their philosophy of returning to the soil and to the traditional crafts of their native country. Their debut…
Beirut-based interior architect Roland Helou, 37, spent his formative years between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, where his father was employed at the construction company Saudi Oger. “It was Dad’s employment that piqued an early interest in design. I remember as a young kid in Riyadh, I us…
It was over twenty-five years ago that Hamad Sultan (above) and Achille Rossini first met as students at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). Then, after they both graduated in 2000, they ended up getting recruited by the same architecture firm in Boston – NADAAA (formerly Office dA). …
Raised amid the luxury fashion world through her parents, Ivi studied Fashion Design at Parsons before stumbling into jewellery. A 2016 visit to an Italian factory introduced her to mentor Gabriele Veneri.
Designer Jozeph Forakis is back in his native New York, over from Milan for the Palm Beach International Boat Show. He joins us from his childhood bedroom in the Brooklyn enclave of Greenpoint.
The town of Bressanone in South Tyrol, where Sandy Attia lives and works, has a unique topography which makes for a very particular working environment, thanks to the dramatic and spectacular Dolomites Mountain range. “Here the mountains are very present, and the landscape is vertical s…
Let’s not beat around the bush here: Amale Andraos is a pioneer, a legend of the architecture world, a role model to Arab creatives and a hero to women. Born in Beirut in 1973, she was raised in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, where her father, an architect himself, had established a pre…
Fifty-five years after founding his label in New York, the 83-year-old designer staged his Spring 2023 collection at San Marino's Huntington Library, his first runway show ever held on the West Coast.
Dubai-based architect Wael Al Awar is not a big fan of 20th century modern architecture. Rather, he subscribes to a new school of expression that eschews ornamentation and focusses on projects that revive cultural identity and craft as well as encourage public engagements and sustainabi…
The Emirati designer has become a leading voice in the Gulf's design scene, weaving folk stories, geometry and sustainable materials into furniture, objects and installations that reinterpret tradition for a modern audience.
The now 40-year-old Egyptian-born architect Tarek Shamma launched his career at London’s Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), graduating with honours in 2009. During the prestigious course, he hit the ground running for Zaha Hadid working on key competitions in Algiers…
Spread across ten beautifully curated rooms, the biggest challenge for Karim Abdul Muttalib and Ann Abukhalil, the two founders of K.A. Interiors, was to make sure the entire villa reflected a unified theme while still giving each room its unique character and identity. To fulfil their …
For the designer Nouchi, every collection begins with a book, transforming the private intimacy of reading into something shared. That softness now shapes a label where home wear and loungewear have naturally become the bestsellers.
A pioneer of the international design scene, Vincenzo De Cotiis is passionate about all artistic forms. “I make no distinction and I believe that the three areas – architecture, interior design and art – are animated by the same energies,” he explains. Whatever De Cotiis works on, from …
Architects don’t typically like to break out of the box when it comes to naming their firms. Take Perkins Eastman, Kohn Pedersen Fox, Foster and Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects as prime examples of this fact. But, as ever, rules are made to be broken and there are at least three noti…
Anissa Kermiche’s business is struggling to keep up with demand to the point that most of the major e-commerce platforms that stock her wares – like Matches Fashion, Farfetch, MyTheresa, SSense, Net-a-Porter and so on – are sold out. Get in touch with her company in London directly, and…
Born in Fez in 1991, Bahaar attended French school in Morocco, embracing two cultures and several languages. She charts her unlikely journey from training as an architect to becoming an influencer and fashion designer.
WHAT WAS THE MOTIVATION FOR BOTH OF YOU TO CHANGE CAREER PATHS FROM FILM TO DESIGN AND CREATE TOLLGÅRD DESIGN GROUP? [Staffan Tollgård] It was our first house project that was the catalyst for my move into the design world. Monique and I met in our twenties on the set of a low budget fe…
No single architect has done more to change the landscape of Beirut’s port district than Bernard Khoury. Having first broken ground in the early 1990s with his landmark BO18 club, he has since added three major residential towers as well as his own studio to the area, but on August 4th,…
It’s official, Nada G. has rebranded as Nada Ghazal Fine Jewelry. “As a young marque, the name ‘Nada G’ served us well locally,” explains 48-year-old Ghazal, “it was edgy and young, just like the brand. But now we cater to a much larger client base, with different personas and a w…
Founded in Beirut in 1891, L'Atelier Nawbar creates intricate designs worn as expressions of love and heritage. Dima and Tania are the dynasty's first female jewellers, continuing their family tradition with modern flair.
You could be forgiven for not knowing Zaniz, yet her portfolio spans more than two decades across residential architecture, commercial interiors, theatre and furniture. We shine a light on a designer who remains elusive.
Born and bred in Lebanon, Rana Nasr runs Bleu Design Consultants from a small Beirut apartment. Her credits include Six Senses in St Kitts and Zighy Bay, and now La Sagesse in Grenada.
Saudi-born and educated in the UK and Australia, Yousef Akbar graduated with a master's in Logistics Management from Sydney in 2012, then swapped spreadsheets for fashion and studied design to follow his true calling.
HOW DID YOU END UP WORKING IN THE WATCH INDUSTRY? [Christian Knoop, Creative Director at IWC Schaffhausen] Watch design was always something I looked at as a source of inspiration and admiration. I am a trained industrial designer and have worked on vastly different products, ranging fr…
Kenneth Ize, remember the name. The Lagos-born and based designer was a finalist of the LVMH Prize for emerging talent, and he’s putting Africa on the fashion map. It’s the kind of exuberant fabric you might see at a Nigerian wedding. Hand-woven by artisans using a techniqu…
Architect Lina Ghotmeh digs into Lebanon’s heritage to create a contemporary landmark that’s as innovative as it is nostalgic. The urban landscape across from the Port of Beirut has undergone a small but significant change. At the edge of Saifi and just beyond Downtown Beirut’s eastern …
World renowned for her ability to merge Japanese austerity and Middle Eastern ornamentation, we couldn’t resist the chance to see inside Nada Debs’ Beirut home, as it revealed another chapter in the story of this designer with a vision. Nada Debs has an eye for colour. It’s evident from…
Tucked away in a residential neighbourhood, Brach Paris is an eclectic and unpretentious new hotel by Philippe Starck that’s shaking up the city’s straitlaced 16th arrondissement. YOU’RE KNOWN TO DISLIKE TALKING ABOUT DESIGN, AS JUST DESIGN, SO WHAT WERE YOUR STARTING POINT…
The amazing three-bedroom house in Shiga, Japan, is the brainchild of Japanese architect Kouichi Kimura. Located between the owner’s concrete factory and a highway, its walls reduce noise level inside and have few windows, providing fortress-level of insulation from the chaos out…
When it comes to furniture design, there are few genuine pioneers left but Sawaya & Moroni are the exception. The independent manufacturers constantly seek new directions, pushing boundaries and creating historically significant pieces in the process. I felt pretty lucky this past C…
With Calypso House, SOMA Architects’ Michel Abboud has created the ultimate seafront home. The glass structure pushes boundaries while providing for an idyllic family getaway. Few homes in Lebanon are as distinctive as Calypso House. Designed by Michel Abboud, founding principal of SOMA…
Michel Abboud, Founder and Principal at NYC-based SOMA Architects, shares his views on the future of architecture in the Middle East. SOMA BECAME GLOBALLY RENOWNED IN 2010 WITH THE PARK 51 ISLAMIC CENTER IN NYC, CLOSE TO GROUND ZERO. WHAT CAUSED THIS CONSTERNATION DO YOU THINK? It becam…
Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye has cultivated a reputation for being fearless and nonconformist but a new project in Abu Dhabi could well define his career. Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island is fast becoming the Arabian Gulf’s most distinguished cultural hub. Travel there now and…
Following the onset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, architect Philippe Daher left both his country and his architecture practice behind. But personifying the motto of what to do when life gives you lemons, he eventually established a new life in neighbouring Lebanon, this time as a tal…
The actress and her image architect Law Roach revisit the 1970s for their second Tommy Hilfiger capsule, swapping zodiac signs for constellation prints and a moody palette of greys and burgundy.
Lebanon’s Gabriel & Guillaume gallery heads to New York City’s most influential design fair to showcase contemporary designers alongside its rare collectible furniture. Gabriel & Guillaume is headed to Manhattan. The travelling collectible design gallery, helmed by a Lebanese an…
Beirut Art Fair’s tenth edition unveils a collection of long lost paintings by Hussein Madi, zones in on the Jordanian art scene and delivers a bevy of international galleries. Q&A with BAF Artistic Director Joanna Abou-Sleiman Chevalier HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE INTERNATIONAL ART …
Litter doesn’t just take decades, or sometimes even centuries to decompose; it also contaminates our soil, air and water. Luckily there’s at least one Beirut-based architecture firm that’s doing something about it. Adib Dada describes his firm, theOtherDada, as: “a Beirut-based for prof…
Anyone who’s ever been to Beirut has probably noticed some pretty eery-looking bullet marks on the walls of this one particular building to the side of Beirut’s downtown ring road. And we’re not talking about the generic shell scars you can still find about town – ubiquitous relics of t…
In Kuwait, Studio Toggle envisioned the very modern Villa Yarmouk as a two-volume house that would allow two brothers and their families to live with each other while still enjoying the privacy of their own homes. The brief for Villa Yarmouk was a challenging one. The owners wanted a mo…
Don’t let those modish swing chairs fool you: Lebanese designer Nayef Francis’ contemporary products are in fact an ingenious window to the past. There’s a touch of nostalgia in all of Nayef Francis’ work. The Lebanese designer credits a childhood spent among Jdeideh’s lush orange grove…
She’s the first woman ever to have been appointed Dean of the Columbia School of Architecture, but Amale Andraos has even more up her sleeve. The New York City-based architect is about to make a historical contribution to the region’s cultural scene. It seems Amale Andraos has never met…
Fusing age-old floor tile making techniques with piping hot design, Blatt Chaya’s Designer Edition will make you fall in love with cement all over again. You might think there’d be little room for traditional cement tiles in a contemporary interior, but Blatt Chaya’s latest project will…
There’s a little known place in Dubai’s residential Nad Al Sheba neighbourhood where magic happens. Well, it might not exactly be magic, but it certainly comes close: Tashkeel is where some of the region’s most talented designers go to turn their artistic visions into reality. The embod…
When the CEO and owner of Aman Resorts, the OKO Group and Capital Group, Vladislav Doronin, decided to build his dream home back in 2006, he tapped the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid for the project and gave her one specific request: “I want to wake up in the morning and just s…
The Lebanese architect Elias Soueidi has won the third annual Audi Innovation Award. Soueidi’s project was selected from over 450 registrations to apply for this year’s competition. His idea, ‘Ruin to Reality’, is an application intended to allow access to virtual 3D models of ruined hi…
Gregory Gatserelia's interiors defy categorisation, each wildly different yet united by drama and a striking centrepiece. Given their baroque grandeur, his unexpected early training comes as a genuine surprise to the uninitiated.
This gorgeous weekend getaway beach house is located on the coast in Amchit, Lebanon, around 40km north of Beirut. It was designed by Karim Nader Studio and Blankpage Architects, a Lebanese firm comprised of Walid Ghantous and Patrick Mezher. Their dramatic 430sqm, three-bedroom design …
My interview with Blankpage gets off to an unsettling start. Sat in their black-walled meeting room, sparsely furnished with Barcelona chairs and large, aesthetic lumps of wood and stone that function as sculpture and furniture, I find myself ranged against the practice’s four principal…
Given the Bauhaus centennial is in 2019, we thought this video was very timely. It goes inside Tecta, one of just a few companies in the world that is faithfully replicating the original pieces of Bauhaus — the school that pioneered the union of art and industrial design for the everyda…
Photographer Marc Goodwin goes behind the scenes at the city’s best architecture firms.
Best of all, there’s not a single clichéd Arabesque motif in sight.
Unpredictable, whimsical and captivating – Bernard Khoury distorts conventional architecture with his evocative buildings. Meet the architect who’s rewriting all the rules of urban living.
The Paris-based, Lebanese-heritage designer turns 1960s Riviera nonchalance and her father's white shirts into a timeless, chic and quietly subversive label that is already crossing continents.
Picture a successful fashion designer 50, 20 or even ten years ago, and you’d likely be thinking of a white man tailoring evening gowns in London or Paris. But today, one of the world’s most watched, most discussed designers is a black man from Chicago; the 37-year-old son of Ghanaian i…
It’s only been five years since Khaled El Mays launched his own furniture design brand but he’s already garnered an incredible amount of coverage with features in Wallpaper, The Observer, The Financial Times’ How to Spend It and Architectural Digest. The Lebanese designer’s …
With an illustrious portfolio of homes and product collaborations to his name, the London-born, Los Angeles-based decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard has an infinite number of stories to tell, and the charm to tell them well.
House of Today’s Cherine Magrabi is propping up regional talent on the international stage. Her visionary concept is inspired, innovative and most of all- it’s working. Anyone casting even a cursory glance over the Lebanese design scene today will notice that the country’s game has stre…
With a sharp eye and a curator’s approach, Chahan Minassian creates unpretentious, tasteful interiors. It’s little wonder then that he was chosen to help renovate one of Paris’ most prestigious projects – the Hôtel de Crillon. Picture the plump curves of two soft grey armchairs, m…
The port city of Jeddah, located on the shores of the Red Sea in western Saudi Arabia, is home to some of the country’s most spectacularly designed homes. But since virtually all of these extraordinary houses are hidden behind walls – privacy is of the utmost importance in the Kingdom –…
It takes a certain optimism to build a city in the desert. Kuwait's rapid urbanisation in the late 1970s marked a landmark in regional architecture, captured in Modern Architecture of Kuwait by Roberto Fabbri and Ricardo Camacho.
Once the capital of the old kingdom of Oman, Mleiha is now part of the UAE and it happens to be a treasure trove of ancient sites and artefacts. As a result, the Sharjah Department of Antiquities has built a stunning new archaeological centre to attract tourists and residents alike. In …
An inspiring short on Vitra, the family-owned Swiss furniture company, beginning with its roots as a licensed producer of Herman Miller pieces for the European market through its ambitious architectural commissions and its eclectic contemporary design collaborations.
Henry Dakak Jr. is a designer with a singular vision. His beautifully made creations, whether furniture, functional objects or jewellery, exemplify a judicious mix of modernity and antiquity, and bely a delicate attention to detail. The history of design is rife with drama. Truthfully, …
Beirut was once home to hundreds of palaces. Perched on the hills of Ashrafieh, Zokak El Blatt, Clemenceau and Kantari, and spreading east to Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael, these spectacular gems of the Ottoman and French Mandate eras were built by wealthy Lebanese merchants seeking peace an…
Interior designer Francis Sultana creates sumptuous homes and tailored furniture for modern-day gentry. Were Louis XIV around today, the architect of Versailles's splendour might well call on Sultana to design and furnish his fictitious twenty-first-century palace.
With a new presence in Dubai and its first large interior-design project under way in the Emirate, Pininfarina extends its Italian legacy across the GCC. Paolo Pininfarina reflects on reinventing the celebrated house after years of mounting debt.
Not all houses were created equal. In the pretty town of Monsef, on a particularly scenic stretch of Mediterranean coastline a few minutes’ drive north of Byblos, Villa Kali attests to that adage. Completed just last year, and often referred to as the El Khalil Beach House (after the fa…
WHY DID YOU BECOME A DESIGNER? I’ve always been an observer of things around me. It began naturally, exploring and investigating the objects in our home. It was second nature to look at and think about those products and decipher how they represented what people like and need. I’ve alwa…
ETIENNE SALOME WHY DID YOU BECOME A DESIGNER? I was attracted to the chalenge of combining technical restrictions and creative freedom; it’s an interaction that makes every day at work an experience. But there’s also a great responsibility, for just a single idea, a small sketch,…
With more participants than ever, Design Days Dubai, the region's first fair devoted to collectible and limited-edition furniture and design objects, draws ever greater interest, this sixth edition gathering fifty leading galleries from thirty-nine countries.
Millennials, the argument runs, despise labels and refuse to be pigeonholed. Stephanie meets Kuwaiti artist and designer Nanu Al Hamad, whose deliberately shocking, category-defying body of work seems made precisely for such a generation.
Koa Canvas is not like your other residential projects in Dubai. With 43 different floor plans for the 70 apartments, it heralds a new approach to community building, one in which individuality and identity are front and centre. What the 30-somethings of today are looking for in a place…
Filmmaker Alejandro Landes’ glorious contemporary home in Miami, on the shores of Biscayne Bay, is as captivating as a cinematic masterpiece. Casa Bahia unfolds like a cinematic dream. The luxurious home (which at 50 million USD, is one of the most expensive properties on the Miami mark…
Featuring walls that slide in and out of the building, the Modulofts by Fouad Samara Architects offer a novel answer to the age-old problem of limited space, demanding only that residents be a little rough and ready.
Before her sudden death at sixty-five, the Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, queen of the curve, was crafting a furniture collection for her long-time gallerist and close friend David Gill.
Lebanese painter, sculptor and architect Nadim Karam dissolves the barriers between his trades. Rather than build within the space allotted, he builds around it, seeking, he says, to create a relationship, a story and a feeling of festivity.
Cairo is a city of scale – it’s the first thing you’re confronted with when you see it from the aeroplane. Not only can you see the Pyramids of Giza, the city’s oldest and most famous example of art at scale, but there are also the vast tracts of red, mud-brick buildings, stretching alm…
Lebanese product designer Richard Yasmine's creations blur the line between fantasy and reality. At once functional household objects and carnal statements, his highly charged work seduces through the use of honest materials and sleek, considered aesthetics.
James Clar emerged in Dubai as a prominent figure in the contemporary art scene, building his reputation as a creative master of neon light and technology. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, the artists’ star is rising as he capitalises on a generalised hunger for conceptual works that me…
CNN Style's Stephy Chung meets the German architect inside his pixelated, seventy-seven-storey tower, now Bangkok's tallest, as Ole Scheeren reflects on his uncanny ability to see a finished building long before it rises.
Turkey's Sancaklar Mosque sheds architectural cliché entirely. This sleek, minimal house of Islamic worship, with its cast concrete walls and cave-like prayer hall, almost vanishes into the landscape, quietly redefining the religious gathering place we thought we knew.
In his first interview in years, John Galliano talks to Claudia Croft in London about his new life and creative role at Maison Margiela, the former Dior designer ready, at fifty-five, to speak again.
Gabriel & Guillaume is an ephemeral gallery of decorative arts that’s got eclecticism at its very core. Started by a Lebanese woman and a Frenchman, neither of whom are trained designers, it’s an unconventional business that has found success among a cultured customer base. Standing…
When architect Nabil Gholam first saw Villa Z, an old abandoned house damaged by years of civil war and military occupation, it was far from love at first sight. From an architectural perspective, it was no gem, with a façade covered in rough stone coursing and a red tile roof that seem…
Founded in 1950, Vitra has made an art form of collaborating with the world’s best designers to create groundbreaking, iconic furniture and now they have a new gabled brick structure to house their 7,000-plus furniture portfolio. Clearly, this creative incubator is in better shape than …
The latest project by Vector Architects speaks for a new generation of Chinese architects resisting the trend for mega-scale schemes, producing instead human-centred, low-level, contextually driven work, even when it gently belies its function as a library.
Wander Dubai's design district, d3, and its limits prove elusive. During its inaugural Design Week the area spilled into Al-Fahidi and the seafront, interrogating craft, indigenous architecture and intimacy in a digital age.
With a complete overhaul by Portuguese architect Ricardo Camacho and Stroop landscape designers, the office of the Emir of Kuwait has revived a swathe of the country's Green Belt, creating its largest urban park and a fitting tribute.
OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), co-founded by Dutch architectural titan and theorist, Rem Koolhaas, has produced as many world-famous architects as it has world-famous buildings. The latest to join the fray is Syrian-born, Iyad Alsaka, partner in charge of the Middle East. I…
As he steps down as chief executive of his eponymous label on the diamond jubilee of his birth, we celebrate the self-taught visionary who turned a fashion house into a true lifestyle empire.
Lebanese designers Nicolas Moussallem and David Raffoul, winning ever more international recognition, are lively company whose conversation rarely runs straight. Long friendship lends them an easy banter, full of inside jokes and the odd affectionate bout of bickering.
Roman St Clair and Maya Khoury argue that people crave community and connection. As the drab indoor food court loses its appeal, they explore why the traditional suburban mall must turn itself inside out to survive.
Everyone knows Jonathan Ive, the Briton behind the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, feted as design's answer to Steve Jobs. It is a good story, except no single stylist is that good; his collaborators remain barely known.