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Dubai Design District was built on a simple premise: that creativity thrives when it is concentrated. A decade on, the district has become home to some of the most distinctive design practices operating in the region. In the first of two features, PAGES profiles five of the studios shaping what interior design looks like in the Gulf today.
Walk through Dubai Design District on any given morning and what strikes you is not the architecture but the ambition. Behind the studio doors and creative spaces of D3 sit practices that are quietly shaping how the Gulf region thinks about the spaces it inhabits. They work across hospitality, residential, retail, and commercial. They are led by founders who chose design not as a career but as a discipline. This is Part 1 of our ongoing series mapping the interior design community based within D3.
01
Design Nomad
Founder and Design Director: Zahir Abdul Latheef
Zahir Abdul Latheef trained as a civil engineer before following what he describes as the poetry of space. He founded Design Nomad in 2015 at the intersection where construction science meets artistic instinct, and in the decade since has realised more than two hundred interiors across the region.
His portfolio spans boutiques, private villas, and workplaces, each carrying what has become a recognisable signature: quiet precision, deliberate use of shadow, and a belief that every material has a story waiting to be uncovered. Concept design sits at the heart of the practice. Zahir listens for what is not said in a brief, then works through BIM and hand sketches until the narrative reveals itself in light, texture, and proportion.
Source: Designnomad.studio
02
Muse Interior Design
Founders: Michael Dudnyk and Stanislava Rudas-Dudnyk
Founded in 2007 by husband and wife Michael Dudnyk and Stanislava Rudas-Dudnyk, Muse Interior Design has spent nearly two decades building a reputation for delivering across the full range of interior design disciplines. The practice works across commercial, institutional, and residential projects throughout the UAE.
What distinguishes Muse is the combination of longevity and range. In a market where many studios specialise narrowly, Michael and Stanislava have built a practice capable of moving between project types without losing the attention to quality that has kept clients returning since the studio’s earliest years.
Source: musedesign.ae
03
DZ Design
Co-founders: Dina Murali and Zain Belgami
Established in 2014, DZ Design was built on a specific proposition: bringing genuine hospitality design expertise to a market that often treats it as an afterthought. Co-founders Dina Murali and Zain Belgami arrived with a collective team experience spanning over years in global hospitality design firms and retail groups, and that depth shows in how the practice operates.
The studio specialises in mid-size hospitality, residential, and commercial projects, with a particular focus on the kind of work that demands both creative rigour and operational precision. Their client onboarding process, notable for its transparency, reflects a founding belief that the best design relationships begin before a single drawing is made.
Source: dzdae.com
04
IDEA Art International Architecture
Managing Director: Ramzi Jizi
Operating from one of the world’s most culturally layered cities, IDEA Art has built its practice around the kind of diversity that Dubai makes possible. The studio brings together designers with international experience across homes, villas, resorts, restaurants, cafes, retail spaces, and large-scale commercial projects, with the full capability to take a concept from brief to execution drawings.
Under Ramzi Jizi’s leadership, the practice has developed a design strategy that deliberately resists the conventional production model. The goal, as the team describes it, is not to process projects but to author them, with each commission treated as an opportunity to escape the predictable and arrive somewhere worth inhabiting.
Source: idea-art.com
05
XBD Collective
Founder: Ellen Søhoel
Founded by Ellen Søhoel, XBD Collective operates as an award-winning international architecture and interior design consultancy with a presence that stretches well beyond the UAE into Europe, the UK, Africa, and Asia. The practice works across commercial, hospitality, retail, and residential projects, with a reputation for delivering at the intersection of innovation and cultural sensitivity.
What distinguishes XBD Collective is its deliberate approach to place. Rather than applying a single aesthetic across markets, the studio draws on the specific architectural and cultural characteristics of each region it works in. Based in D3, the practice brings that same thinking to the Gulf, treating the region not as a market to be entered but as a culture to be understood.
Source: xbdesign.com
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Part 2 of this series will feature five more interior design studios based in Dubai Design District. Published on thepageshub.com as part of PAGES ongoing series mapping the built environment community across Dubai.
PAGES is an editorial platform and strategic brand partner for the built environment — we tell the stories that build reputations, and the strategies that turn them into revenue.
