Commercial Interior Design

Studio design tips from Cambra Buró 🕶️

We asked CEO, founder and design director Alicia Cambra (.buro) to share one way design teams can create a workspace that’s both productive and fun. Here is the answer:

“Create a space that feels flexible and personal. A studio should support focus, but also allow spontaneous conversations, material exploration, and moments of play. That balance is what keeps creativity alive.”

The practice is cleverly crafted to allow conversations and ideas to flow organically. Cambra talks us through the Kuwait office space, sharing the thinking behind its boldest design decisions and why fig is next in line as the studio’s signature scent...

Wisdom to inspire and design excellence to strive for. Find the post on CID.

A luminous residential project to bring into the spotlight 🌟

The design vision for the Sienna Views Villa renovation was brought to life by Soul Road (.co) in collaboration with Akoa Interiors (.interiors), and it is a masterclass in architectural and design restraint.

Located within Jumeirah Golf Estates, it began as a “good” property in a prime location but now boasts completely reimagined interiors and has undergone a comprehensive revision of the floor plan, along with an architectural overhaul of the façade and rear elevation – placing the 10,000 sq ft property in its own league of design excellence.

Defined by a minimalist aesthetic and a seamless indoor–outdoor narrative, the villa celebrates quiet luxury at its finest. “We weren’t afraid of white space,” says Sophie Newcombe, founder and managing director of Soul Road, the Dubai-based studio. “There is often a temptation to fill every wall with either a rich material or an artwork, but we were determined to let the house breathe and allow the space itself to shine.”

Blank canvas minimalism bolstered by a thoughtful design process makes for timeless and inspiring spaces.

Construction by: .llc
📸 Kelly Tooze ()

On designing without reset: What design inherits after crisis

There’s a persistent fiction that follows every crisis: that once the dust settles, the city begins again. Clean slate. New systems. Better plans. But that’s rarely what happens.

What you actually inherit is something far less legible: half-working infrastructures, spaces that were never meant to hold the lives now unfolding within them, and layers of occupation that don’t quite align but continue anyway. Design doesn’t enter as a gesture of renewal; it enters into negotiation. With what remains, with what’s been repurposed, and with what was never formally designed to begin with. In that sense, post-crisis work isn’t about starting over. It’s about learning how to read what’s already there, even when it resists being read.

🖋️ Layal Merhi, architect, designer and educator

A powerful read on CID.