Designed to seamlessly blend business and leisure, luxury and lifestyle, One Za’abeel is the new mixed-use complex of Ithra Dubai LLC and covers an area of 530,000 sqm. Located in the heart of the city and close to the International Financial Centre, it is designed by Nikken Sekkei, a prestigious Japanese architecture, engineering and urban planning studio.
Architect: Nikken Sekkei
Design: Fiandre Architectural Surfaces
Project: One Za’abeel complex
Location: Dubai , UAE
Property Owner: Ithra Dubai LLC
Chief Architect and Consultant: Stefan Krummeck
GFA: 530,000 sqm.
Photo: One Za’abeel, photo courtesy of Fiandre Architectural Surfaces
This project was invited by Design Anthology (referred to as \”da\” hereafter) and exhibited in Shanghai for four days upon its completion in 2023. As a magazine that combines design and art, Design Anthology(da) itself is like an archive. Returning to the theme of the invitation, \”Archive,\” we aimed to extract inspiration and express design concepts from the magazine itself.
The Norodom Business Tower is a mixed-use tower located in Phnom Penh City, Cambodia. The project is designed to be a Grade-A office with a 5-star hotel, offering more than 10,000 sq m of office space and 226 keys for the hotel, with amenities like function areas, restaurants, a rooftop bar, a rooftop pool, a gym, and a spa.
Project: Norodom Business Tower Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Client: TP Moral Construction & Development Co., Ltd.
What is the essence of portrait photography?
This has been a constant pondering for Dingji Photography over the past eleven years. With a focus on excellence and a pursuit of the highest standards, Dingji has established seven distinct professional portrait photography institutions in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. Now, Dingji presents a new concept for its eighth establishment: a non-profit, dedicated space solely for exploring the art of portraiture.
“After hearing this concept from the founder of Dingji, as someone who has visited numerous art spaces, I was immediately moved. In a time filled with competition and uncertainty due to the pandemic (during the planning phase), Dingji persists in stubbornly ‘discussing art’—a practice that seems detached from commercial interests yet truly elevates the production of portrait photography to its utmost perfection. This is commendable,” expressed Luo Zhenhua from WIT Design.
However, the average customer expenditure is five to ten times higher than that of Dingji’s regular stores, and yet it continues to be widely loved.
01 Space
“The Portrait Steward in the Era of Cloud Computing”
However, is art really so distant from us?
It is well known that many of our country’s products have hardware that is on par with top Western brands, yet there is still a gap in terms of pricing. Perhaps what is lacking is a thorough understanding of art and design.
Speaking of portrait photography, during the years of my interaction with Dingji, I have never for a moment considered it to be just an ordinary photo studio. Dingji’s artistry is far from being exclusive to a select few. It has consistently and silently provided a photography service that withstands scrutiny, constantly pushing the boundaries of portrait art to its utmost perfection.
Within the exhibition hall’s corridors, a scene of mechanical aesthetics unfolds. It seems as if, in the fraction of a second captured by the mechanical shutter sound, guests are frozen and captured, while being processed and uploaded in real-time. Dingji’s artistic output is not akin to the portrait oil paintings of the 16th-century Renaissance, nor the slow development of images by cameras in the 19th century. Instead, it exists within a futuristic realm of silver and metallic textures, where capturing, storing, and online management are unrestricted by technology—never fading, never lost.
This eighth establishment, the Huanya Art Space, offers customers a glimpse into the future—a scenario where, in the era of cloud data, they not only serve as photographers for the guests but also act as their portrait stewards.
As the artistic portrait stewards, Dingji also provides large-scale interactive installations within the exhibition hall, showcasing the power of their advanced backend technologies.
If there were a “Heavenly Photo Studio,” it would most likely be curved in design.
The exhibition hall is curved in design—Architect Antoni Gaudí once said, “Straight lines belong to man, while curved lines belong to God.”
The exhibition hall will host regular photography exhibitions, with the aim of fostering the self-evolution of Dingji through the showcased works. Additionally, the art corridor is divided into sections by the shape of mechanical shutters, with each section documenting a story and scene captured by Dingji’s photography.
02 Value
Brand’s Autonomous Transformation
Portrait Consultant + Art Exploration + Homage to Future Imaging
Returning to the commercial space itself, after the pandemic, the project has gained a significant number of customers, achieving an average customer expenditure that is 5-10 times higher than that of its regular stores. This transformation has brought about a qualitative change in both the business and brand dimensions.
This is a contemporary imaging space that observes and explores the future, reaching people through intuitive design and receiving positive responses. Portrait photography is a combination of a portrait consultant, art exploration, and homage to future imaging within a service-oriented system.
03 Nature
“There was a touching story about a Dingji staff member that really moved me: A customer wanted to have their portrait taken during sunrise. When the customer arrived at the outdoor shooting location promptly at 6 a.m., the enthusiastic Dingji business team offered them tea, and the makeup team had already prepared all the necessary facilities outdoors. The photography team’s instructor, equipment, devices, and lighting were all perfectly set up in advance. The customer’s experience was further enhanced as they melted into the moment, accompanied by the warm rays of the rising sun.”
Returning to the commercial space itself, the project has consistently attracted a significant number of customers after the pandemic.
At that moment, it wasn’t just a groggy independent photographer welcoming the guests, but rather an entire professional business team working together systematically to pursue artistic outcomes. In the end, a series of personalized, custom-made artistic portraits with a sense of contemporary tension are produced.
MADEC – Open Museum of Economic Development of Caxias do Sul is a cultural center allied to a business hub organized in the form of an open museum, which consists of five buildings connected to each other by universally accessible open paths that permeate the natural landscape of the CIC land, embracing and preserving the existing building.
The idea is that the project be represented from four economic forces, considered the basis for the development of the city of Caxias do Sul: AGRICULTURE + TRADE + INDUSTRY + SERVICES. These four forces will be present in the materiality and spatiality of the complex.
Ayamonte is a border city bounded by two large bodies of water. To the west is the mouth of the Guadiana, a great territorial reference for the town and natural border with Portugal; to the southeast the marshes and salt flats, an extensive, changing and horizontal landscape ignored until recently due to the railway belt dismantled in the 1990s. The Congress Center is located on these lands rediscovered by the city.
The new exhibition and brand experience building dedicated to the art of writing by the firm Montblanc and designed by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, opens its doors in Hamburg (Germany).
The “BEN MOO Brand Exhibition Hall”, located on the fifth floor of Fusen-Noble House in Nanmen, is one of the latest works carefully planned and designed by Rene Liu and Jiajun Tang, the design directors of HDC Design.
This exhibition hall is a brand-new design work created by the designers after carefully reading the series composition and development concept of BEN MOO products, together with the brand, using a restrained and spiritual design aesthetic. Therefore, in terms of functionality, aesthetic significance, and the sense of “communication” in contemporary commercial space, it has reached a high degree of fit.
Exposition of Jelgava St. Trinity Church Tower is designed as a contemporary interior installation, which clearly separates the historical heritage from the contemporary implementation. The historic masonry walls of the tower have been left intact, exposing the interior of the historic building. The exposition is interactive and integrates the latest technologies, which allows the history of Jelgava to be revealed gradually. When entering the exposition premises, visitors can see the exhibits and their descriptions, while the invisible part of the exposition is hidden in various mechanically movable elements and multimedia. Such a principle of exploring the exposition allows not only to create a space not oversaturated with information, but also makes visitors interested in seeing the invisible, hearing the inaudible, feeling the lost Jelgava. The exposition is painted in a monolithic light gray color, which both allows to create a homogeneous, sculptural interior, and makes a reference to the historical bright interior of the church. The exposition is made on three floors with different themes.
The project is located in Hall 2, Fusen Mall, Chengdu, China, which gathers many brands and also forms a unique immersive shopping experience center. The project is on the left side of the escalator on the third floor of the mall, facing the atrium, but it is easy to be missed by consumers in the actual sight . How to solve this problem is an urgent problem for design.
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