#7 / Small Talk with Noura Al Kaabi

we are a world capital. We have such an interesting identity and leadership with such good taste. Why don't we have a design week? And in Abu Dhabi, we don't have a lot of grassroots movement. So we don't have a lot of people doing things outside of the government. So he said, why are we complaining? Let's just do it. Instead of spending time complaining that we don't have-- so we started three years ago, so this is the third edition. And it's done-- everybody was hanging posters and working until the morning to deliver this. But it's more of a-- it became something that we share with others. But people have been saying that it should be a week, not three days. It should be a full week. So thank you so much. [INTERPOSING VOICES] It's OK, Ahmed. You know, I think I'm going to-- oh, very delicate. It's good. [INTERPOSING VOICES] I think there's some. So the way we record is just like we're having a very informal conversation. I already guaranteed that I'll send the audio up before we publish, just to make sure that-- Do you think that I would, but whatever they ask for, whether it's a recording or a video or a video? Yeah, of course, of course. No, no, no, no. And this is a very, very informal conversation. And above all, it was a way of having your ex-ency to come to Slash. And spending some time is always-- we always-- all of us feel so inspired every time. We have the opportunity to be with you. And this is just an argument to do that. And I think that the exhibition that we will show after on the way out is such-- Johannes was mentioning how unexpected is to have a world-class exhibition inside this building. You know, for free, for everyone to come. And we'll see that later. But I want to start with something that has nothing to do with any of this. We are in a building that is one of the most special buildings in Abu Dhabi. But if there's someone that can tell us something about this building is your ex-ency, what are your memories about this building? What-- we are very young tenants here. We have been here for three years. And we have been living these later stage. But you have been here for almost since the beginning of the building. What are your memories coming here? How was it? Sure. I think, first of all, thank you for inviting me. It's wonderful to be here and to be among such beautiful minds and beautiful space. I mean, this building just provokes a lot of memories. For me in Abu Dhabi, there are two buildings. That's for folks' memories. One is the culture-- so chapter one in my childhood was the Cultural Foundation, which we all know of. And the second one is, of course, what used to be called the Art of Officers Club, which is now Earth. It's kind of a place where it brought us as a family. I'm not going to say more intimate during the weekend, because weekends, this is where the time you'll connect. You'll spend more time with the family. But my father, who is sharing this place as an ex-military guy, used to bring us all the time here. We play sports. We watch movies. It's not necessarily the movies that are in cinemas. But the classical, beautiful movies fits the mission impossible, or whatever it is. And recently, they showed the last, I think, edition of the mission possible at the Cannes Film Festival. So and again, and for him, he is a person who wanted to inject a routine into the family. And I'm not going to say a routine. I'm going to say more of an order. A military kind of a mindset will come with an order. Today, we're going to have lunch at this time. It's not like, yes or no? It's just an order. It's used to kind of bother us because it was an order. But I am so thankful that the order helped us to just think of a fixed time to spend with the family and just grow this bond. So Earth is one of the places we used to come here every Saturday to have lunch together, workout or watch a movie. And it has been always a place where not just for us as a family, but the people who work here. We know wonderful team members have been here for more than 26 years. And they're like family to us as well. And family to others. Other tenants or other visitors to the office club. So many kids from Abu Dhabi, if you say the past 20 years, they also have fond memories of Earth as similar as the ones that some of them will tell you about the cultural foundations or other, let's say, sites within the capital. Yeah, landmarks in Abu Dhabi. When we moved here as a design studio, it was quite unexpected because most people would say, why is the design studio in Earth? We were fortunate to be very inspired by your sister, Checha. She was always so welcoming and showing as that there was a reason. I think now we don't want to leave, so it became home for us. And it feels so special to be here. And this connects with the subject that we all connect with you. We see the subject of Emirati identity. And how a place like this that has deep roots in the architecture, history of recent architecture, history of the country. Now a contemporary design company comes to this building. And people say that it fits here, that it looks like your palace, you are in the right place. But you have been going through this journey of watching the development of what is the codification of this Emirati identity. You have been representing the country so well in so many instances of culture and arts. And how it feels to carry that flag of the identity in Venice Biennale, telling the story of this beautiful nation in the arts and in the culture environment. Because it's unexpected from the other side. I see that when I travel, and I say, where are you from? I say, from the UAE. Oh, there's design in the UAE. Oh, there's architecture in the UAE. And you have been dealing with this way before what I'm benefiting now from your work over the last years. How is it? Oh, well, too many feelings, good feelings, when it comes to the identity element. And I think one of the reasons you're here in Earth and Abu Dhabi is because when we talk about identity, we have a lot of common language together. We understand that identity is not about exclusiveness, but inclusiveness. We understand that identity evolves. We understand that it's open and not closed. And therefore, going to the point where your presence here as a modern, forward-looking, clean kind of a design, that also integrates with the identity itself, it shows that we want to make sure that if you're in a modern heritage building, it's built in the '90s or the built in the '80s. It doesn't mean that you're going to look for a building that is all glass and clear and it's like, no. It's how this integration can work. And I think maybe we consider design as something with feelings, because we want to feel it. We want to see what is the impact of it, whether it's a stool, whether it's a chair, whether it's a paper, whether it's a design. And I think this is maybe what connects us and connects the ethos of what you're trying to do and what you're trying to do and what you're trying to do and other projects maybe we're going to talk about later on. But living in Abu Dhabi, and I think this is also a testament to the founding father. He was very open. He was very open to invite architects and have those kind of a special building, built, and thankfully, by the Department of Culture, to recognize them as modern heritage and protects them at the same time. You can't not just mention the Cultural Foundation and the building of it and how it was inaugurated in the '80s, but if you look at that building, which is in the '80s and any other building in the UAE, you will understand how maybe that was kind of the transformational mind-chef shift when it comes to design, to architect design. So, I think going back to design, I think it is not the statics and how it looks like, but I think it's beyond that and how can we translate that? It's, we always tried to say, to explain that design is just a synthesis of something. It's a visual synthesis of something, but what is supporting that decision of choosing a color or a shape or, you know, a material? It has to have a narrative that it's much deeper than what it looks like, otherwise it becomes a trend and it doesn't last. And one of the things that I value a lot in the work done by the founding father and then the family that continue, that it's looking for this balance between timelessness. And I personally use that word all the time with my team saying, what we do here should last. It's long term. We don't want to convince anyone of a cool trend. We want to make sure that people will refer back to us in the UAE as people that are adding value and long term value. Do you think in all these places that we travel, that we go to represent? That's the perception is still a working progress. What we designers can do to help in that? Well, I think we reached a point and I, you know, everything does a work in progress. I mean, we're still -- everything we're doing is a work in progress. But I think we reached a level where the aesthetics of an Emirati design is looked into differently. And the reason I'm saying that is you're looking from an official perspective, from a presidential perspective, from how the team of, let's say, the president and let's say, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her. And I think the work in progress is not the work we do is more about the awareness that we need to amplify even better. Some individuals think it's just about how it looks like, how the table is beautiful, how the coaster is nice, oh, nice, this is nice, nice. But I think it's beyond that and you just said it, it's about the story, the lasting story and about the narrative. So how the narrative can stick and how it can be connected, everything is thought of. And I think this is something that makes a design worth worth it and worth for you to understand the narrative. So I believe that statically, we, we, you know that how the UI design looks like, but we want the public to understand why it looks like this way. Because I grew up with a very traditional motives when it comes to the doors, when it comes to the building themselves, the shabby house, when it comes to the, you know, the seating area, the floor seating area, we, we called K, all of that. There are, there are kind of certain traditional motives that are there and designs and floor, or the palm, or the camel, you know, I'm not sure we do have a lot in Emirati design and calligraphy. We have it more of the, of the nature element that the UAE is, you know, is, is about. So how you can see those elements clearly or in a very sub minimum way. Yet again, we'll have a lot of thought when it comes to the, to the substance of the work, to the kind of wood, to the sand, to the, to the design, to wise or the fabric or the color. So I think it's maybe an, and you spoke about codifying, this is we, this is something we spoke about a lot, how can we codify things and will, will public understand the codifying, will they understand the guide. And you said it, they need to be inspired, I'm using your words now. So how can we inspire them? So, inspiring them and then making them understand the story. So in a short, yes, I think we have a refined design because of partners like you and designers in the UAE who are also following suit when it comes to that, you can see it in many places. Yet I think I would love to see that this is widely understood, similarly to what we see in certain countries, whether in the Scandinavian, Scandinavian countries or in Japan. In 1995, and I, I tell the team several times that I feel extremely privileged to be in this moment in time. We have been here for 15 years to be part of this moment of creation, of the creation of this identity because as a young nation, it is a privilege to, to be contributing to something because in most countries everything is so defined and established that it's very hard to have impact and, and to make a dent. Yes. And we have been very fortunate to be here in this time and be led by people like your Excellency or Hynastric Amarium that are the creative directors, you know, that show us the way. But in a way, there's a, there's a hybrid in my opinion, and we spoke a lot about guidelines and in other projects, in other instance. There's this hybrid between giving the boundaries for that identity, to create some structure, but also to allow for it to happen, in a way, because we can say there's only one color or one typography or one shape. But that would not be probably the best representation of this nation, that it's so rich, there's 200 nationalities here, there's a very strong leadership. I like the idea that this is a never ending process. Oh, I can progress. It says forever working progress. But, but then when we go to places and we were fortunate to collaborate in, in two versions of the Venice Biennale in 2016, 2018. The Shabby House and the life-scapes beyond bigness. And I remember when I went the first time in 2016 for the Shabby House project. And, and the surprise in, in, in everyone that we would speak when we would say that Shakespeare was contacting Bauhaus, you know, in the 60s, about a new way of designing housing for, for people that were not used to be in settlement. And bringing them into settlements and, and the more, the more we dig into this, the more we realize that all of this is by design. He had a vision, a very clear vision, maybe not specifically on the stone or, and, and we are benefiting daily from that. You know a lot about that history, you listen about how important was he, his Highness Sheikh Zaire, for this identity that we, that we talk about? I think he's the Godfather of all the identity we are now enjoying. Not just from a design perspective, but from an openness perspective. You know, there's certain images of him holding his stick next to him, either a Japanese urban planner or an Egyptian urban planner or an architect. And you said it, you know, how he, he talks and, you know, talks to the likes of the Bauhaus or, or, or, you know, doing his best to invite certain specialist to talk about agriculture and greenery. How he, how said yet the island, which is now the cultural district as a district, that the island that is used was used as a laboratory for more of a greenery experiments to, you know, to turn this desert into kind of a greenery. And, and I have some stories of individuals who say, we came to Abu Dhabi, it was all, you know, it was all sand, but there were certain flowers from the airport to the street. There's certain, you know, why did he want, why did he want to add greenery? Why, why was the submission to him? And why was it a mission to him, not just in Abu Dhabi, but before Abu Dhabi in the '60s? Why, he, he looked at the village system as a system of, of course, is a system of a genius of, you know, of, of it as a, as a, as a, you know, as a way to, you know, to water the plants and to, to make sure that there is a, there's enough water for, for residents yet again at the same time, how can he see if this is also an opportunity for him to, to green the desert. So, for him, from greening the desert, from inviting specialists from Asia or from Europe to do it, and then from building the urban planning of, of Abu Dhabi. Let's say the main island, so the main island, what inspired him? You know, in the '50s he went to Europe and he went to New York and he spent time in New York because his brother was going through a therapy, a treatment, sorry, you know, hand. And, you know, blessed their souls, his brother passed away, but this is for him, he looked, he was in a building that was, for him, was futuristic and he looked at the urban planning of certain cities and it was inspired him. So it comes from a very, sometimes certain things come from a very simple, inspirational idea. Not theories or PhDs or going to the best design schools and I think for him as a basic, simple desert, bit one, or the simple studies, he had just the stick and the sand and let's go back to what we're trying to do here. I mean, I was walking towards your offices, I saw clean lines, I saw clean woods and I didn't see that much of a noise in my eyes when it comes to, you know, to, to appreciating design. So I think it came from, from a simple person by design and by openness. And when I say openness, you mentioned identity and you mentioned how many nationalities we have in the country. It's, people say it's a challenge, how would you, are you going to cater to everyone? So for you, how can you cater for everyone? You cater for everyone, you go back to your identity, say, my identity is by having, by being inclusive, by, by allowing also others to be part of this, by allowing others to give me ideas, to give me inspirations. Yet again at the same time, we have a baseline. What are my ethos? What do I want to stick to? And then later on, translate it together as a universal language. Your Excellency, you mentioned briefly two main references for us in terms of design, Scandinavian, Japan. We are having this conversation in the first day of our design event here. And the speakers are either from Scandinavia or from Japan. We have two from Scandinavia, two from, from Japan. And it's by design. It's by design. In the sense that I'm, we like the aesthetics, but it can't be a question of liking because then everybody's taste is different than everybody. So we have been studying and researching about how did I add the privilege two weeks ago to be in Osaka and to meet Tadawondo, the architect. And we were talking about, we're not with him, but we were talking about the contemporary Japanese architecture. It's very recent. It's very recent. They started, everybody now recognizes concrete as part of the Japanese. But it was because there was fires in the city and they started forbidding building with wood. And then they had to build with concrete. And then people like Tadawondo came and perfectioned the art of concrete. But now we think that concrete is a traditional, you know, Japanese. It's not. It's very recent. When we speak about Scandinavian minimalism, the Vikings were not minimalistic. And the traditional design of Scandinavia, it was quite recent that we came there. So I say this because there's a wishful thinking that as we are designing the Emirati contemporary design, we can also follow similar lines of creating a very clear language that people across the world when we travel and represent the US. Oh, that's Emirati. That's the same way that they say that Japanese or that's Scandinavian. Do you think we'll be able to achieve that? Is thinking too boldly and too ambitiously? Or can we one day have an Emirati style that people will recognize? Well, you know, as a person who works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and looking at the number of missions we have around the world and looking at how open we are to dialogue, how open we are to make sure that we're here to talk about prosperity, we're here to talk about how can we build things together and do our best to de-escalate any tensions. That gives us more of a leverage to say, okay, this is how we, you know, this is the Emirati and this is how we can perpetuate, let's say, the message to the missions and everyone. Now, can we one day reach that point? I believe yes, we can. Because I kind of see it in, I don't know, I kind of see it in certain home designs. But there's something that's very interesting, Nunu, and this might be a nice challenge because sometimes you're a neighborhood in Sharja, let's say, and you can be in the same, in a similar neighborhood, and Qatar on Bahrain, with the villas, how they look like, with the furniture and everything. So we kind of in the here in the Gulf have a kind of a common way of how the buildings look like, or how the furniture looks like. Now everyone is moving to minimalism, and minimalism is looking the same, whether your house is, your flat is in, you know, in New York, or it's in Abu Dhabi, or it's in Shanghai, there is kind of a similarity to a certain design of chairs and everything. So cracking how the UAE design will look like, I think it's not going to be that easy, but it's doable. But again, you know, there, you always say, okay, this chair is from this country, or this building comes from this country, or this kind of a design is a pure kind of Scandinavian design. But I think it takes, I think it takes two to tango. I think it's just not, it's more than just us doing it. Maybe there might be a school of a design, of a variety design. And from that school, we would be able to distinguish the chair, the bed, I don't know, the building, I don't know, maybe it will come up with the three days of design you do here. I think we need to just nail how the series will look like, or will it be a school? And the more, we invite people to their conversation, or to the discourse, I think we might be able to nail it. And in a way, there is something that really makes us hopeful that that will happen, which is the fact that the design that we have today, and that we are doing, and that it's coming out of the studios in the UAE, it's rooted in very strong things, and very, very, one of the words, I never, I do design for 30 years. I never heard so many times the word narrative close to the word design, as I hear here, never. In all these years, doing design in Europe, doing design in many places. Designed, even I'm not saying people don't have a narrative, but here it's almost like you can't dissociate. There's this idea that we need to know why it's designed that way. We need to know why that choice was made. We need to understand what is supporting that. We, even our methodology as a studio, we started creating, since we are in the UAE not before, this idea of the strategic iron principle, this idea of the foundations of design. We need to make sure that design is rooted in something that it's deeper than the visual outcome of the design, so that we can always go back to the why we are designing like that. And it's not it's not Nuno's taste, it's not Bernardo's taste, it's not Michele's taste, it's rooted in something that it's deeper, and that I give credit, obviously, to our leadership and to the people that inspire us to have our feet on the ground and knowing where we're coming from. And maybe Nuno is just to also sometimes, how can we, when we reach a point, how can we transfer the knowledge in certain design schools, or certain design exchange, or exchanges, or residences? You know, it's just how can this be also a way of an understanding or a design that can be, you know, transferred to somewhere else. And I think it will help in terms of having this tap of an Emirati design. When we visit places like the Al-Hazan Festival, you know, when you see all those young designers, there is a common, if you zoom out a little bit, you understand, oh, I mean Abu Dhabi, and these are Emirati designers or people that do design in the, you know, people like Al-Jud, there's been representing so well that design in the way that she was saying, it's still a lot of experimental. There's still a lot of people trying a lot of different things, but that's so exciting. Yeah, I mean, you happen to, you have, you have, you have, you have as much as you are sometimes with this, you know, stools, and maybe this is, I'll go back to your point, you know, what you always mention is how a design inspires a lot of design, how this minimal work. And I think I'll go back to our president when he sits on what, what is the type of table? What's the wood, what's the coasters, the plants, the artwork behind him, the color of a wall. It's just very refined and, and very kind of consistent. And I think how can we work towards such consistency with, you know, with, it's, it's, okay, it's difficult to be consistent and be also creative at the same time. Because we're creating. Yeah, so because we're creating. So, so, so again, I think, I think this is another thing that, you know, I, I, I give also credit to she, I already am, her highness is, as, you go back to the narrative is all about the narrative. These coasters made by women from a gradier, those, these, these are an artwork from a, from a, one of our pioneer modern history artists at the Qadraius, one of the genius individuals in water color angles, which is not easy. Why am I using the rough, why am I using those kind of plants, then you go back to the point of the global concern sustainability. You mentioned how in Japan, they, you know, they transformed from wood to cement due to the fires. And I think we're an age right now we transform, you know, God forbid, not for catastrophe that's happening, but for global call for sustainability. But again, this global call goes back to our, you know, ancestors kind of a way of living, adapting and using certain materials and how can we go back to that material. And it's normal, you're in a country where there was, there was scarcity and then there was an abundance of, you know, from the oil, from the livelihood, from schools, from, you know, the salaries, the job opportunities. Everyone wanted a beautiful, big house, you know, it looks different. And from the house to practices, to traditional or let's say, to intangible practices. So you look at the houses, you look at the, the way they, I mean, luckily the way we dress, maybe you're fine in a way, but you look at as well the weddings, the weddings are, you know, we reached a point where weddings were very lavish because of the abundance. Now we're trying our best to go back to our basics, basic traditional weddings, daytime instead of nighttime, et cetera, et cetera. But it's, I think going back to the SMAP of our, you know, key points of what defines the Emirati design or the Gulf design and then move ahead with it. There's a, we, we mentioned narrative to create design, but, but I was, your actions were mentioning about the president and how consistent is the environment around him in terms of design, the simplicity and so on. And it feels a lot of times also the other way around, which is the design is like that so that we focus less on the design and more on the message. It feels like design is, we don't add so that we don't get distracted with things that might not matter, but we want to make sure that people listen to the, to the words and to the voice and design becomes a support and not the purpose. So the purpose is not to look good, it's to be there to support something that it's much deeper than how it looks. From the ground, you know, talking to people, you have, you know, a small basket of foot in front of him, nothing that distracts the view because the man is talking and just everything just basic. And this is how it is. This is how it looks like, you know, and later on those layers and additions came in in design and having those. Golden motifs in the house or, you know, a curtain or like a serious way of looking and that I think happens naturally when someone wants to, you know, not to follow a trend, but this is how they looked like. So, I'm pretty sure we could stay the whole day talking and it's always a pleasure, actually, you are so inspiring for us and I think a lot of what we do in this company, if not everything is inspired by people like yourself, Sheikh Amarim, and every people that surrounds us and pushes to do better and pushes to deliver on everything that is being done. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. I'm inspired by you. I'm inspired by everything you do and of course the team here and works and slash and, and I think you're, you know, you're one of our forces that helps us to understand how can we work together to create something out of, after, after what you're trying to do. So thank you so much for making this happen. - Thank you, thank you. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Thank you. Thank you. (laughing) - Thank you. - Thank you. - Sure. - But the ones that are in general will be there. - Thank you. Thank you. (footsteps)