A business card says a lot about a person. Take Nada Debs' new card, for example. It's a light grey and off-white affair, embossed with a highly tactile geometric pattern. Her name, written in a custom-designed typeface based on a surprisingly successful marriage of Kufic script and Japanese Kanji, is angular and flowing at the same time.
Understated, yet stylish, it is the perfect introduction to the understated yet stylish woman who operates two eponymous design stores on opposite sides of the street in central Beirut's Saifi Village. The original store, which opened a couple of years ago, will soon become dedicated to Debs' delectable line in modern Middle Eastern accessories: inlaid wood trays, Plexiglas stools, transparent mushrabiya screens, clever C-shaped side tables and mother-of-pearl and Plexiglas mirrors.
The new store, one wall of which is decorated with the same pattern that graces her business card, is devoted to Debs' larger items; the modern mother-of-pearl inlaid tables, sofas and commodes that make up her East Is East collection, as well as now-classic creations like Pebbles, an interconnected cluster of brass tables and Coffee Bean, a low, ring-shaped oval table available in a variety of finishes, including a dramatic Imperial Red lacquer.
I tell Debs that her beautifully laid-out new store could almost be an art gallery. She smiles. "Of course, [furniture] has to look good, but it has to feel good too and not only to sit with emotionally but also to sit on physically," she says. "This trend of art as furniture, I like the idea but I think for me it's more important that furniture is functional." Somewhere between the two poles lies Debs' latest armchair, Arabesque Moderne. As any successful object should, Moderne evokes a variety of responses but does so not by projecting the smooth, characterless identity favoured by so many contemporary designers but, instead, by deft references to multiple places and times.
The geometric pattern carved into its low, curved back, for example, could easily have been etched on some Alhambran wall, while its slender and gently angled legs are immediately reminiscent of the kind of furniture your forward-thinking relatives used to own in the 1950s. The dark wood finish, which ought to be heavy and austere, is lifted with almost tropical élan by the cushion, upholstered in a bright, cheerful yellow fabric.
The result is the kind of chair that would look as natural placed next to a Minotti sofa as it would in room full of Damascene antiques and that could as easily have graced the lobby of Muscat's Al Bustan Palace as the Kahala in Honolulu, where it would surely have caught Elizabeth Taylor's eye. Born and brought up in Japan, Debs is on a continuous quest to marry the two aesthetic cultures to which she is heir: the geometric but highly decorative Middle Eastern school and the pure forms and more austere style of Japan. Moderne's cosmopolitan everywhere and every-when feel is a particularly striking result.
"Sometimes, I don't know where I am. I'm lost in translation," she says with typically self-deprecating humour. "Well, maybe not lost, more like I'm in the process of evolution." Moderne is a neat encapsulation of that "evolution" for, alongside the deft mix of contemporary form and traditional decoration for which Debs is already known, it expresses her increasing, though somewhat ambivalent, attraction to ornamentation and her pursuit of what she refers to as "emotional" design.
"I started with really pure forms, pure shapes and then I moved (to Lebanon), a country that's full of ornament. Now I'm trying to fuse the two but the longer I live here….," she trails off. "We need to feel the human element, that's why we're here on earth, and this reminds you that someone was there at the moment it was created, it was someone's hand that did this." The "this" to which Debs is referring is the delicate mother-of-pearl pattern set into the tabletop around which we are sitting, an abstract representation of the ubiquitous Japanese cherry blossom - but she could just as easily be talking of the delicate metal inlay in her wood trays or for that matter, the intricate arabesques on her armchair, all of them reminders of the hand of man in her designs.
"I'm fighting industry with handicraft, I'm fighting modernity with tradition. I want a mass market, I want to appeal to the world but I also want to appeal to the emotions, for my designs to remain human. To me, that's what is really precious."
Company%20Profile
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Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
AL%20BOOM
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The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The bio
His favourite book - 1984 by George Orwell
His favourite quote - 'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance' by Derek Bok, Former President of Harvard
Favourite place to travel to - Peloponnese, Southern Greece
Favourite movie - The Last Emperor
Favourite personality from history - Alexander the Great
Role Model - My father, Yiannis Davos
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
