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October 2023 – March 2024

Design Center for Sobha

Strategic Design activity to define the characteristics of the new Sobha’s design centre and to understand its feasibility.

Introduction

Sobha Furniture it’s part of the Sobha Realty group, one of the main developers in the UAE market. Sobha Furniture takes care of the furbishing of buildings and villas developed by Sobha Realty with the intention to provide customers with furniture pieces of own design. The Design Centre, object of the research, should take care of the design of all furniture and products that will be then realized in the company’s factories in Dubai.

REsearch area

• Design in Organization

Topic

• Strategic Design

IMG-20240624-WA0022

D+S People

Daniela Maurer
Filippo Parolini
Francesco Zurlo

Others

Federica Colmbo
Stefano Magistretti
Monica Mishell Orta Solano

Main objective

The overall goal of the activity conducted is to define Sobha’s design centre and to understand its feasibility.
This main goal can be divided into some sub-goals:
  • understand the design centres context, the existing models and typologies
  • understand the development process adopted by furniture and lifestyle design companies
  • understand the relevant parameters and elements that contribute to the establishment of design centres and departments
  • understand the support that technologies can provide to the design process
  • understand Sobha’s strategic objective in relation to the opening of the design centre to define its aims and goals
  • understand Sobha’s design centre key characteristics
  • understand the overall feasibility of the proposal

Main activities

The activities involved four main steps that allowed to further refine the results until reaching the definition of Sobha’s design centre:
  • research: to explore the context, including other design centres, furniture and lifestyle design companies and studios, Sobha’s demands and target, existing technologies to support the design process
  • analysis: of the researched topics, to identify recurring patterns and significant insights that could shape the definition of design centres’ scenarios
  • workshop: to discuss together the defined scenarios, select the most suitable option for Sobha’s design centre and identify relevant aspects to include
  • feasibility study: to further define the design centre

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