I am quite familiar with Dubai and its design scene. I have been a regular visitor for more than 10 years. It is hard to name an area where hospitality, friendship, culture, ambition, and beauty are so highly regarded.
Great design is so many things all at the same time. It is emotional, functional, and responsive. It creates an unwritten dialogue, a connection, between itself and those who experience it. It is open to interpretation yet created for a specific purpose. It creates meaning and value.
We are buying stuff we know we don't need, and that is a problem we should face in design. It starts with creating an object that transports through time a valuable idea: that it can live forever.
Some people have a concept of design: that it should be without the maker. I have been educated in this way, the traditional way. But I am not naive. I know that we make my things, and that people want them. I am signing them - and I am winking at them.
I want to create a world with objects and surroundings that are human, more romantic, and less sterile.
People like their handbag more than their sofa, and I hate it.