< Previouscommercialinteriordesign.comAugust 2025 40 Riyad Joucka Riyad Joucka is in a meeting when we arrive. He looks pensive, but in true Palestinian warmth apologises intermittently which makes the modernist grey-scale headquarters of MEAN* instantly feel sepia. When he does nally sit for our conversation, his towering height and boy-like smile is similar to his ideas. Progressive and determined but lled with urries of playfulness. We appease this part of the Dubai architect, designer and fellow in practice at the Zayed University College of Arts and Creative Enterprises, by asking a very important question: If you were a scent, what would you be? “Concrete,” he answers, immediately and concretely. It reminds him of visiting construction sites with his father, a prominent architect in Jordan. The profession is ingrained in him. With a lineage that includes painters and visionaries it’s no wonder that Joucka is heavily involved with 3D-Printing and avant- garde technologies. We are surrounded by scatterings of bio-forms, fossils, and miniature canopies of sci- trees which were actually prototypes of structures for Saudi giga-projects. If he was an instrument, he would be the drums, in case you were wondering. “I’m at the centre of things, orchestrating,” he says, which, considering the battalion of creatives that have helped him build Middle East Architecture Network* one of the most provocative studios in the region, makes sense. “Our mission is to amalgamate computation, material research, and digital fabrication, to provide interdisciplinary solutions that respond to current economic, environmental, and social challenges,” he explains. With a manifesto like that, who are we to argue? The conversation turns to the chair. The looped, warped and folded ribbon of plastic morphed into a vessel to sit in. It’s called mawj, the Arabic word for wave but, it’s not of this Earth. Covered in hypnotic ridges and grooves, Joucka tells us that it is entirely 3D-printed from one piece of 6mm thick plastic and is 100 percent biodegradable. Again, nothing to argue with. commercialinteriordesign.comAugust 2025 41 Riyad Jouckacommercialinteriordesign.comAugust 2025 42 Riyad Jouckacommercialinteriordesign.comAugust 2025 43 Riyad Jouckacommercialinteriordesign.comAugust 2025 44 Riyad Jouckacommercialinteriordesign.comAugust 2025 45 Riyad Joucka Do you have weird dreams? we ask. “Yeah, yeah I do,” he says, half laughing while looking into the distance. We don’t probe further into the odyssey because we only have an hour. The architecture of MEAN* is civic, egoless and obstinate we tell him, and he modestly agrees. Meta-Modular confronts a global housing crisis with a modular, dry-assembly housing kit, constructed using recyclable concrete 3D Printing. Customisable and adaptable over time, it offers the dignity of individualism with the perks of next-gen intelligence like having a wind tower that doubles as an open entrance and courtyard to provide natural ventilation. His moral compass is sobering for a man still in his 30s with Dubai at his feet. Decidious is an ephemeral printed pavilion commissioned for DIFC, off-white nodules rise 12 feet in the air and claw together tipped in tangerine. It looks fossilised, crustacean- like. It isn’t. Joucka says it was the outcome of an error in the printing code, for a self- confessed perfectionist (and he doesn’t mean this positively) it reminds us that accidents don’t happen. The Migrant Kitchen in New York, Uncanny Valley in Kurzeme, Shell Star in Hong Kong, House 00 in RAK and Yeoui Naru Ferry in Seoul, transmit Joucka’s vision into every crevice of the planet. MEAN* has designed event kiosks for Hermès, high-fashion headwear for Arab musicians, a retail store for a superstar athlete and super-structures for NEOM but the sage in him dreams of designing a museum for Arab history, most of which he feels still isn’t represented fairly on the world stage. “A museum is a home for heritage, it lasts forever, it’s a monument and to be able to design one that houses my own ancestry is one of my life-long dreams.” Until then, the design institution is busy paving the way for future architects with MEAL* (Middle East Architecture Lab), a research arm of MEAN* that offers a series of advanced live classes and lectures in computational design. It makes perfect sense now. Fountainhead is his favourite book, but also his blueprint. The story of a young architect who refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment averse to progression. “To be able to design a museum that houses my own ancestry is a dream”46 commercialinteriordesign.comAugust 2025Special report ARCHITECTURAL INFLUENCE Fighting for beauty in a modern world growing increasingly indifferent47 commercialinteriordesign.comAugust 2025Special report 50 Beauty in layers by Leila Sobek, founder and architect, BMA 52 How Nautis residences on Dubai Islands is shaping a new kind of Dubai 48 The war against ugly by Zen Baharcommercialinteriordesign.comSpecial Report: OpinionAugust 2025 THE W AR ON UGL Y Zen Bahar discusses what is lost and what is gained under the guise of modernisation49 commercialinteriordesign.comSpecial Report: OpinionAugust 2025 And we are losing discernment? The algorithm has replaced instinct, and without understanding what we’re engaging with. Its cultural context and its reference, our choices are becoming a performance. In truth, our preferences were slowly built over a lifetime, through exposure, re ection and context. A myriad of personalities and subcultures tinted fashion, politics, music and art. Into this void steps minimalism, a modernist movement that champion’s restraint with ideas borrowed from Zen Buddhism and Bauhaus ideals. It promises to strip away the excess to reveal some deeper truth, but the base energies of existence are kinetic, created. This stripping away is a reaction to consumerism, one that if retroactively applied might have left the Trevi Fountain a lump of stone. Yet this ideal is not universal. A tribe in Patagonia might see minimalism as hollow and stripped of humanity. A struggling single- parent in Upstate New York isn’t minimal, they’re simply making do. The distinction is subtle but profound. And ironically, minimalism has become a high-cost, high- control lifestyle that relies on privilege to afford space, to hide clutter and curate life down to a few monochrome items. It relies on ‘having’ while simultaneously pretending to reject. Is there something sinister at play? A push toward a one-world, standardised society, one artery of thought that we must cling to or be cast out from (at risk of being “cancelled”). In this climate, individuality becomes a rebellion. Beauty becomes an act of resistance. Because at any given moment it provides an excuse, a reason, to see the world in another way. And if restrained design draws from Taoism, we’ve forgotten the heart of it. the idea was that life cannot be grasped as a concept within the limitations of language, it has to be seen through the living of everyday life. No leaf is spared because of its beauty, no ower because of its fragrance, and although the law of nature is ruthless, it still blooms. We must return to a world where every little thing is beautiful. If architecture commercialises common thinking, then what do our urban cities reveal about us? And, if architecture is a re ection of a nation’s political, social, economic and cultural stability, are we engaged or apathetic? Street lights went from barnacle- embellished iron ornaments on the side of London’s Embankment, to 100-watt LED’s bolted to the end of anonymous aluminium poles. Beautiful architecture is swapped for ROI with high-rise, minimalistic structures that obey technology and economics. Each city has its own characteristics that form its reputation and identity. In Jerusalem, buildings are required to be covered with ‘Jerusalem stone’ to preserve the cities historical legend. In Jaipur, Northwest India, buildings are painted pink, and while the world’s major cities like London and Paris are focused on preserving historical buildings and sites, its street furniture isn’t. In a world of dominated by globalisation, these elements mark the uniqueness of a city compared to countless others. The red telephone box in the UK, now synonymous with ‘Britishness’ has a tourism value and therefore an economic value. The yellow taxis of New York, the wrought iron Art Nouveau benches of Paris, the hand-carved fountains of Rome, that wonky tower in Pisa, are all symbols of place. In contrast, the winning bench designs from the London Festival of Architecture feel more like re ections of individual taste than expressions of a collective cultural fabric. A primary-coloured ceramic-tile and brick structure by designer Maria Gasparian sits outside the historic Bow Church in East London; a yellow ribbon of plastic, warped into ledges and grooves, curls quietly inside One New Change in the City. Are we losing context? Street furniture is becoming an opportunity for artistic expression but for the individual rather than the collective. We are not being soothed by geometric gardens in city-squares anymore, modern annexes straddle the side of historical landmarks, divorced, disassociated. brick structure by sits outside the his London; a yellow into ledges and gro One New Change i Are we losing c is becoming an expression but for the collective. We geometric gardens modern annexes st landmarks, divorceNext >