COP 28
Eco-build with Emirati elegance
The most important climate conference in the world needed a space that meant what it said.
COP28 brought 150 heads of state and 100,000 delegates to Expo City Dubai. We were asked to design the interiors for the head of state experience – 40 spaces across the site, from the Leadership Pavilion to bilateral meeting rooms. Every one of them needed to feel authentically Emirati. And every one needed to prove, before a single conversation started, that sustainability wasn’t just the agenda. It was the room itself.
"The brief was clear - the space had to live the values of the event. That's not usually how environments work. It's how this one had to be."
Dara O'Hanlon, Head of Environments
We started with the Sadu – the Bedouin weaving technique that has shaped Emirati craft for generations. Its geometry, its desert palette, its sense of place became the visual language across every space. The past as the foundation for a conversation about the future.
Then we built it that way too. The hard surfaces were made from Dateform and Datecrete – the world’s first date seed-based building materials, engineered locally in the UAE. Instead of new plastic we used Seaform, a locally sourced recycled marine plastic. Benches were made from fallen date palms. All 2,000 pieces of furniture were designed and built in the UAE, each with a full plan for reuse after the event. Every material decision was a sustainability decision. Not as a gesture. As a commitment.
The security and technology requirements for 150 heads of state are significant. You’d never have known. Every system was designed to disappear into the space – present where it needed to be, invisible everywhere else. The experience was always the priority. Everything else served it.
150 world leaders. 100,000 delegates. Every supplier from the UAE. Every surface made with materials that had a life before the conference and a life after it.
