< Previous20 commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Pop-up design21 commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Pop-up design THE POWER OF A POP-UP Meet DLE: The studio that turns obstacles into opportunities, limited space into layered theatre and small budgets into big impact22 commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Pop-up design If permanent architecture is the polished elder sibling, buttoned-up, legacy-focused, obsessed with symmetry and skyline silhouettes, then temporary architecture is its cooler, wilder cousin. The one who para- chutes into town, throws a party, rewires your senses and disappears before you even learn how to pronounce their full name. When it comes to designing these eeting marvels, Designlab Experience (DLE) doesn’t just understand the art of ephemera; they’ve turned it into a poetic rebellion. To describe DLE as a chameleon is not just a clever metaphor. It’s their whole design philosophy. “We don’t subscribe to a xed aesthetic,” says Marwan Maalouf, head of architecture, Design Lab Experience. “We adapt.” Unlike design studios that impose a heavy signature on everything they touch, DLE listens, learns and then shapes. Temporary design for them is about discovering identity, not branding it. This shape-shifting spirit may sound romantic but it’s also progressive. In a world obsessed with permanence, awards, timelines and limestone facades, it takes a bold kind of bravery to specialise in architecture that disappears. “It’s not about legacy. It’s about impact in the moment,” Maalouf explains. Cue goosebumps. This kind of ego-less storytelling demands a rare humility in the industry. Or maybe just the nerve to dance in the rain while everyone else is sealing marble. And they’re not just dancing. They’re inventing. One of their most poetic moments came courtesy of chicken wire. Yes, the humble hardware store staple. Fragile, raw, a little bit punk yet when shaped with intention, it became something almost balletic. It’s a perfect metaphor for DLE’s approach: taking the ordinary, the discarded, the “wait, this?” and creating something that leaves guests wide-eyed and whispering. But of course there’s always a tension in pop-up design between spectacle and sustainability. DLE knows this well. While other studios might resort to smoke and mirrors (literally), DLE builds with conscience. “We reuse, we reinvent,” Maalouf adds. That bedazzled structure you saw at a gala last year? It’s now a series of steel frames in a “It’s not about creating a legacy, it’s about impact in the moment”23 commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Pop-up design wedding tent on a mountain. And that custom sofa? It’s enjoying a second life in someone’s moody Majlis. This isn’t just eco-friendliness. It’s reincarnation by design. Context too isn’t just a backdrop in DLE’s world. It’s the beginning of everything. “Whether cultural, spatial or social, context de nes the narrative we build around,” Maalouf adds. Which makes sense because pop-ups, more than any other format, are time capsules. They re ect what’s happening now, the mood of a city, the rituals of a culture and the energy of a moment. And when done right? That temporary structure becomes emotionally timeless. A place you remember not just because of how it looked but because of how it made you feel. And feeling is something DLE engineers with precision. Lighting, scent, visuals, texture and even sound. All of it is considered part of the design language. Think of it as architectural ASMR. Of course all this magic doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Constraints like tight budgets, timelines and plot twists involving goats aren’t just accepted. They’re embraced. “Constraints are the fuel,” Maalouf says. And it shows. DLE is the kind of studio that turns obstacles into opportunities, limited space into layered theatre and small budgets into large impact. There’s a mischief to it, sure. But it’s the kind of mischief that wins hearts (and awards). Perhaps that’s the secret. Temporary architecture isn’t about less. It’s about concentrated meaning. No time to bore, no room for uff. Every design decision must serve the story. Every detail has to hit. So what’s the power of a pop-up? It’s the ability to create something unforgettable not in spite of its impermanence but because of it. It’s a reminder that design doesn’t need to last forever to matter. That a chameleon, for all its changeability, still leaves a mark. And that maybe the future of architecture doesn’t just lie in what we build but in what we’re brave enough to let go.commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Desert Rock 24commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Desert Rock 25 The idea of “silent monumentality” shaped everything. Buildings are not structures but shadows. Interiors are not spaces but pauses in the terrain. Each decision is a quiet negotiation with the land. It’s this restraint that makes Desert Rock feel so radical. In a world where hospitality is too often loud, architecturally, visually and ecologically, this is a project about listening. The design uses the natural microclimates of crevices and shaded wadis to cool its spaces. Ventilation and light ows through carefully cut voids. Shadows fall exactly where they’re meant to. “The natural formations frame the view,” Archambault explains, “not the architecture.” And while its tone is hushed, the ambition here isn’t. Carved into three elevations, the resort includes suites embedded deep into the massif, public areas set along ledges and villas that cantilever gently from stone outcrops. This is a luxury resort in the desert. It’s also a meditation in stone, a quiet rebellion against the idea that progress must come at nature’s expense. Designed by Oppenheim Architecture and led by the thoughtful hand of Timothy Archambault, the resort doesn’t crown the landscape. It becomes it. Chiselled from the jagged shoulder of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Mountains, Desert Rock is a return to values lost somewhere between the industrial revolution and a market economy. From the start, this was never about architecture as monument. It was about the memory of what once was, and what could be again. “We looked to the Nabateans,” says Archambault, “for how they engaged with their landscape rather than imposed upon it.” And so the team didn’t clear the mountain; they carved into it, creating cliff-hugging villas and cave suites that allow the land to speak rst. HOW TO disappear No signature structures. No ego. No architectural noise. Desert Rock is about what you don’t see By Zen Baharcommercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Desert Rock 26commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Desert Rock 27commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Desert Rock 28 The view is never interrupted. The land is never attened. There’s something cinematic about it, each guest’s journey becomes a kind of pilgrimage, unfolding across light, silence and elevation. Materiality becomes metaphor. Concrete is made from crushed local stone. Walls are built from granite quarried nearby. Even sand, sifted from the site itself, becomes part of the aggregate. This isn’t just biophilia, it’s geology as narrative. And the emotional intelligence of this place is unmistakable. Every space is designed not only to house the body but to stir the soul. Guests are meant to feel something: stillness, reverence, connection. And that’s no accident. “We wanted to elicit a deep connection to the mountains,” says Archambault. “To offer a place that felt as if it had always existed.” Even programming bends toward authenticity. Guided tours are led by locals, embedding the resort into the cultural rhythms of the region. Meanwhile, water retention systems do more than serve the hotel, they replenish the land. Native plants reintroduced into the Wadi now reshape the microclimate. Sustainability here is not a label, its logic. As for energy? Passive cooling strategies rule. Massive overhangs, shaded placement and natural ventilation help reduce consumption. And it’s all been done with LEED Platinum goals rmly in place. But this is not a story of greenwashing. It’s something deeper. Something older. Perhaps the most telling feature is what you don’t see. No signature structures. No ego. No architectural noise. Just the slow fade of stone into structure and structure back into sand. Because at Desert Rock, time isn’t measured by timelines. It’s measured in erosion. In silence. In the sweep of a shadow over rock. Amidst email reminders, next-stop announcements and survival caffeine, luxury is the ability to disappear into the land. And as the rest of the world races to build higher, faster, louder, Desert Rock offers a different vision. If this is the future of regenerative design, it’s not one that shouts from the rooftops. It’s one carved gently, stone by stone, into the soul of a mountain. “We wanted to elicit a deep connection to the mountains”commercialinteriordesign.comJuly 2025Desert Rock 29Next >