Broken Threads by Kinda Ghannoum – Courtesy of the designer.

Design. “Over time, weavers translated their surroundings into carpets, drawing from the landscapes, patterns, and stories that shaped their lives. My surroundings today are different,” Kinda Ghannoum told Archipanic. “As a designer working largely in digital spaces and living far from my homeland, my visual world is shaped by screens, pixels, software, and code.”

• RELATED STORIES: Read more about Dubai Design Week 2026 on Archipanic.

The collection on show at the UAE Designers Exhibition – Courtesy of Dubai Design Week 2026.

Hence Broken Threads, a carpet collection in which the Syrian-Polish multidisciplinary designer sets ancient weaving against pixelated patterns, giving heritage a contemporary twist. Curator, architect and designer AlZaina Lootah chose the collection for the UAE Designers Exhibition at Dubai Design Week, a showcase for local talent.

Broken Threads sits within this year’s theme, Inherited Futures, which explores how the new generation reinterprets materials, rituals, industries, technologies and ways of making across the UAE. The exhibition is part of Downtown Design Fair, supported by Dubai Culture.

Photo by Mohammad Qaissiah.

Broken Threads looks back and forward at once. ‘Rather than preserving the past unchanged, the work continues an ongoing thread between heritage and contemporary life,’ the designer shares. Traditional motifs and ornamental references are recast in a digital visual language, tying inherited forms to present-day experiences.

Photo by Mohammad Qaissiah.

Elsewhere, Ghannoum is a co-founder of the Syrian Design Archive, which documents graphic design in Syria and the stories it tells. ‘Our adventure began in Syria, where we unexpectedly found ourselves amidst people’s bookshelves, old archives, and ancient bookshops, places suspended in time.’

With a background in architecture and a Master of Visual Arts from Sint Lucas Antwerpen, she works across branding, typography and research. Arabic visual culture and calligraphy shape letterforms and patterns that probe identity, memory and cultural narratives. Broken Threads is memory, rewoven.

Courtesy of the designer.