Attributed to Kadambari Uppal, Founder & Creative Director, KAD Designs

Based in Dubai, a city synonymous with innovation and luxury, KAD Designs has established itself as a design-forward atelier delivering the region’s most distinguished residences. Founded in 2017 by husband-and-wife duo Kadambari and Akshat, both accomplished pilots and entrepreneurs, the studio offers an unrivalled proposition: luxury interiors, bespoke furniture, and in-house manufacturing, seamlessly woven into one practice.

With a growing portfolio that includes residences at The Royal Atlantis, Emirates Hills, Palm Jumeirah, and Jumeirah Islands, KAD Designs is celebrated for crafting homes that are both timeless and deeply personal. Each project is treated as a work of art, balancing architectural elegance with the individuality of its owner. The result is interiors that are not only visually compelling but also spaces of permanence and beauty.

What distinguishes KAD Designs is its design-led approach supported by complete in-house production. Unlike conventional studios that separate vision from execution, every element from joinery to furniture is designed, developed, and produced within their own facilities. This integration allows them to maintain uncompromising standards, ensuring that no detail is left to chance.

“At KAD Designs, we curate spaces that transcend trends,” says Kadambari Uppal, Founder and Creative Director. “Each home is approached as a canvas, shaped by dialogue with our clients and defined by bespoke craftsmanship. For us, luxury lies in individuality and in the details that reveal character.”

Alongside Kadambari, Akshat, Director of Production, ensures that this creative vision is executed with discipline and precision. Overseeing factory operations and project delivery, he provides clients with the rare assurance that even large-scale villas are brought to life with boutique-level attention. Their partnership, rooted in trust and dual expertise, forms the foundation of the studio’s reputation for excellence.

KAD Designs also aligns its practice with sustainability. The studio integrates responsibly sourced, durable materials into its projects and has committed to planting trees with every completed commission, extending its philosophy of lasting design to the environment.

As the studio looks toward the future, KAD Designs is expanding into limited-edition collectible furniture and international collaborations, further cementing its position as one of Dubai’s most design-forward luxury ateliers.

By Hisham El Assaad, Founder of OSUS Properties

Cities have been engineered for the sun. Workdays convene at 9, errands end by 8, and residential streets dim to silence by 11. That’s the situation in most cities around the globe. Yet the economic life of a modern metropolis does not fade with daylight. The night economy, spanning entertainment, after-hours logistics, healthcare, hospitality, mobility, and a vast shift-based workforce, now determines where value concentrates and how real estate must evolve.

Time as a zoning variable
Traditional master plans separate uses by function. Night-ready districts separate and orchestrate uses by hour. A warehouse can be a training and community facility by day, then flip to micro-fulfillment after dark. Residential buildings serving nurses, hospitality teams, pilots, and warehouse crews should include ‘reverse amenities’. This includes circadian lighting presets, blackout shades, acoustic floors, cold-storage lockers for off-hour deliveries, and nap pods in shared lounges. Retail and F&B clusters need performance-grade acoustics, safe pedestrian flows, and curbside ‘flex lanes’ that transform from café seating in the evening to freight access windows at 2 a.m. When we design for temporal adjacencies, conflicts decline and productivity rises.

Make logistics omnipresent but invisible
Night is the heartbeat of e-commerce and just-in-time supply. Real estate that wins the night integrates micro-fulfillment centers under podiums, dark stores in secondary frontages, and EV charging in subgrade decks. Sound-dampened loading bays, rubberized ramps, and sensor-based dock scheduling reduce noise and congestion. Street edges should host QR-coded pickup zones that revert to parking or micromobility docks by day. The goal is elegant frictionlessness where goods move, riders transfer, and residents sleep, simultaneously.

A test of trust and experience
After dark, perception drives behavior. Lighting must shift from merely bright to legible. It should be uniform, glare-free, and coordinated with wayfinding and CCTV sightlines. Mixed-use promenades benefit from layered activity, late-opening bookstores beside dessert bars, wellness studios, and compact performance stages, so footfall never collapses into pockets of emptiness. Transit nodes need 24/7 restrooms, vending, secure waiting areas, and live service information. When people feel invited to linger, they spend. When workers feel respected, they stay.

How to make it work?
To operationalize this, I advocate a pragmatic 5D framework for night-ready districts. First comes demand. Map footfall and order density by hour, not day. The midnight–4 a.m. window often contains high-value micro-peaks that justify targeted F&B, wellness, and logistics capacity. Second, dwell. Design for safe lingering, including continuous sightlines, seating ‘in company’ not isolation, and late-night services (pharmacies, clinics, transit help desks). Third comes delivery. Engineer curb and vertical circulation for after-hours freight, with quiet materials, timed access, and basement micro-hubs to keep streets serene. Fourth is diversity, where you should bear in mind to mix uses so no single category dominates. Residential, hospitality, education, and culture should overlap to sustain a living pattern every hour. And last, data. Districts should be instrumented with sensors for noise, light, air quality, and footfall; feed this into rolling operations plans that adjust cleaning, security, staffing, and routing by hour.

What it means for developers and investors
For investors and developers, the economics are compelling. Night extends asset utilization from a single shift to a 24-hour yield model. A logistics-light podium can improve retail sales conversion. A hospitality cluster co-located with medical and aviation housing reduces vacancy risk, and a residential asset tailored for shift workers commands loyalty and length of stay. Crucially, night design mitigates externalities, including noise, traffic, and light pollution, before they become regulatory barriers or community flashpoints.

City leaders must provide incentive overlays for late-opening anchors, performance-based noise and lighting standards, and expedited approvals for mixed-use projects that include subgrade logistics. They should also provide transit service commitments that align with workforce rosters. Safety is policy, but it is also design, eyes-on-the-street programming, active frontages, and predictable maintenance cycles.

Dubai and the wider Gulf have a natural edge. They are a service-centric economy, with global travel cycles, and a culture of operational excellence. Our opportunity is to codify night into the blueprint, so every master plan, every tower, every district is evaluated for its 2 a.m. performance as rigorously as its 2 p.m. peak.

By Sherif Nagy, Chief Executive Officer of ME FITOUT

Across the Gulf, design has always been driven by a combination of adaptation and aesthetics. In recent years, as the region has begun encountering shifting weather patterns, new consumer preferences and industry challenges, the role of interior fit-out design is fast expanding. Rather than being a secondary element in the built environment, fit-out design has now evolved into a strategic factor central to advancing the Gulf’s long-term climate resilience and shaping future-ready, high-performance interiors.

Today, the way we design, construct, and maintain interiors directly impacts how well buildings can withstand environmental pressures while maintaining comfort for occupants. Modern interiors are increasingly engineered to handle higher cooling loads, regulate elevated humidity, and support efficient maintenance cycles, all while meeting the growing demand for sustainability.

For fit-out professionals, resilience is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Beyond enhancing operational efficiency, it plays a key role in long-term cost management and asset longevity. As regional governments accelerate their sustainability and net-zero agendas, the fit-out industry’s ability to integrate climate-adaptive strategies will define its relevance in the coming decade.

Choosing the right materials is one of the most effective ways to adapt to extreme climate conditions. The Gulf’s harsh weather demands materials that can withstand heat, moisture, and corrosion without compromising on aesthetics. Studies on Gulf high-rise buildings have shown that even simple improvements to the building envelope and interior materials can cut energy demand by up to 60 per cent in existing structures and nearly 70 per cent in new ones.

Thermally reflective finishes, corrosion-resistant metals, and materials with low volatile organic compounds (VOCs), that maintain air quality under constant air-conditioning loads, are becoming the new standard. As clients increasingly demand environmentally responsible solutions, the industry must focus on materials that balance durability, sustainability, and performance under extreme conditions.

Even though fit-out work focuses on interior environments, designers have a surprising amount of influence on energy performance. Passive design principles such as smart partitioning to enhance airflow, reflective surfaces to reduce heat absorption, and integrated shading can significantly reduce the burden on HVAC systems. With urban heat islands intensifying across Gulf cities, every interior layout and material choice must now serve the dual purpose of aesthetic appeal and thermal efficiency.

Meanwhile, the Gulf’s real estate market is evolving at an unprecedented pace. With progressive regulations, dynamic tenant expectations, and rapid technological advancements, buildings are becoming more responsive and future-oriented. As a result, interiors are now designed with adaptability in mind, enabling spaces to evolve sustainably as needs and innovations continue to arise.

Modular joinery systems, raised flooring, and flexible lighting grids allow spaces to evolve with minimal disruption and waste. This flexibility improves operational resilience as well as supports environmental goals by reducing material waste over time. In a future defined by constant change, modularity is the foundation of longevity.

Resilience in the Gulf region will also be powered by data. Smart sensors that monitor temperature, humidity, and occupancy patterns can automatically adjust lighting and cooling, maintaining energy efficiency while ensuring occupant comfort. IoT-enabled systems can even detect early signs of humidity-related issues, such as mould formations, before they escalate into major financial concerns. As high energy consumption remains a regional challenge, integrating technology into fit-out design is essential. These innovations align with the UAE’s Net Zero 2050 strategy and broader GCC sustainability goals, creating interiors that are intelligent, adaptive, and environmentally responsible.

Leading fit-out firms in the UAE are shifting their focus from cost to value. This is because clients today are more aware of lifecycle costs, operational risks, and ESG commitments. A fit-out that demonstrates measurable energy savings, reduced maintenance needs, and climate-ready design meets compliance and also gains a clear competitive edge.

In the years ahead, resilience will become a key commercial differentiator in the marketplace, influencing investment decisions and brand reputation alike. To future-proof interiors, fit-out specialists must embrace climate-risk modelling during the design phase, assessing how materials and layouts will perform under projected 2035–2040 conditions. Collaboration with suppliers who provide verified data on material performance in Gulf environments will be essential to ensure that sustainability claims translate into real-world durability.

By combining passive design, modular systems, and intelligent monitoring, the Gulf’s fit-out industry has the opportunity to meet sustainability standards as well as set new benchmarks. In doing so, it will help shape a new era of resilient, climate-conscious interiors that adapt as the region’s vision for sustainability evolves.