Woven Forest by Designlab Experience at Dubai Design Week 2025 – All photos are courtesy of Dubai Design Week.

Design. In the heart of Dubai Design District (d3), Designlab Experience debuts at Dubai Design Week with Woven Forest, a captivating installation that unfolds as a constellation of bamboo baskets held aloft by slender steel trunks. In this sculptural grove, material, memory and movement intertwine. Craftsmanship blends with architecture and light, suspended above a timber platform for communal gathering.

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Rooted in the regional tradition of palm weaving, the project translates an ancestral craft into a contemporary language of design, creating a dialogue between heritage and modernity. “Woven Forest explores the balance between industry and nature, structure and fluidity, and history and future,” lead architect Marwan Maalouf told Archipanic.

The installation transforms from day to night. Under the sun, light filters through the lattice of bamboo, projecting intricate woven shadows across the ground like fleeting traces of history. As evening falls, the same canopy glows from within — a luminous crown of amber and gold that envelops the courtyard in quiet wonder. This ever-shifting choreography of light and shadow evokes the forest’s natural rhythm, while highlighting the relationship between material, craft and atmosphere.

“The baskets were originally handcrafted from bamboo, a living material that, once dried, appears still yet remains full of memory and strength,” Maalouf notes. “By lifting them above the audience through a series of steel trees, we give them renewed life, where nature and design are in dialogue once again.” Beneath this suspended canopy, visitors are invited to wander, reflect, and lose themselves in the gentle interplay between the organic and the engineered.

Nestled within a palm-lined courtyard, Woven Forest harmonises with its architectural surroundings. Its axis is intentionally tilted to align with pedestrian flows, while vivid red benches trace a central pathway. Each steel “tree” is slightly rotated, introducing an organic rhythm that mirrors the forest’s natural logic — ordered yet free.

In the heart of Dubai, Woven Forest reminds us that design, like nature, thrives in evolution — forever weaving together past, present and possibility.

All photos of the installation are courtesy of Designlab Experience.

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