We’ve seen art used as a decorative flourish or a clever way to pull a room together, but it seems that the real magic happens when someone's entire private domestic world is built around a collection. Art certainly plays a key role in interior design, but for the owners of these 11 beautiful Dubai homes, it comes first – the pivot around which the architecture and daily life fall into place.
From a staggering 400-work-collection tucked away in peaceful Al Barari, to a sky-high apartment in the heart of the city that feels like an industrial-chic gallery, these Dubai homes are the most delightfully creative, experimental and inviting spaces that have mastered the art of living.
The garden bordering the Abou Khalil family's Dubai home in the city's Al Meydan neighbourhood features local flora in keeping with the surrounding desert, but inside, the house is unexpectedly verdant and filled with a dazzling museum-worthy art collection that evokes its owners' personal journeys.
The artwork is part of a series created by Lebanese artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, and the substantial collection amassed by Nassib, Sara and Hala Abou Khalil, whose Dubai home has a gallery-like feel and offers up surprises at every turn. Abu Hamdan’s innovative work makes a suitably impactful first statement. It also continues to evolve. Upon closer inspection, visitors will notice lengths of audio tape hanging off the branches. The artist was inspired by a similar practice he encountered while walking in Lebanon’s Chouf Mountains: a local shepherd explained that the tape stopped birds from eating the fruit on the trees. “As they are electromagnetic, they also register sound,” Nassib explains. “Lawrence is very technically savvy and managed to harvest the audio from tapes that were randomly collected from the trees over the years. Step inside the Dubai home here.
Most people would be intimidated by the prospect of redecorating a chandelier-strewn former embassy and turning it into a liveable family home. But when Taline Aynilian Boladian first viewed this grand villa in Dubai’s beachside Jumeirah neighbourhood, she knew it would provide the perfect backdrop for the impressive art collection she has amassed with her husband Raffi – and enough space for their three children (aged ten and under) to have their own play zones.
In most of the house, Boladian has kept the walls off-white – a crisp backdrop for art – punctuating them with boldly patterned wallpapers on feature walls. Layered with paintings and photographs, these serve as decorative punctuation points. “I felt I had the liberty of dialling things up because I’m in Dubai,” she says. “You have the opportunity to start over here and experiment, because there aren’t prescriptive ideas about the way things should be done. Anything goes.”
The art on display in the villa is gloriously diverse, spanning different eras, countries and media. “As an art advisor, I usually create a narrative thread for other people, but I’ve given myself the liberty to live with what I love – I can just dive into what I think is aesthetically beautiful,” explains Boladian, who was an Orientalist art specialist at Christie’s and Bonhams in New York before setting up BAKS/Art Advisory with Juliana Khalaf Salhab in Lebanon in 2014. Step inside the Dubai home here.
Slick and impeccably choreographed as it is, this apartment in Dubai International Finance Centre is the antithesis of cookie-cutter urban living, with thoughtful touches throughout. The three-bedroom apartment belongs to Persian-born Parsa Ghavimi, who began doing small renovation projects during his free time, which eventually evolved into this new home, designed entirely by, and for, himself.
Ghavimi wanted to create a “sculptural and gallery-like” atmosphere where every element would communicate visually, rather than feeling like disparate rooms. Focusing on surface finishes proved crucial to the design’s integrity. A plain structural column was transformed into an architectural feature by cladding it in stainless steel.
Ghavimi prefers to maintain a neutral colour palette in his projects, introducing “colour, tension and emotion” via artworks. Living surrounded by art comes naturally to him – he grew up in a family of collectors - and here it lends warmth to the industrial aesthetic. “My art collection is a mixture of family pieces — mainly works by important Iranian artists — and pieces I have collected over time by younger contemporary artists,” he explains. “For me, art has never been something secondary or decorative within a home; it is always part of the identity of the space itself.” He enjoys blending different generations of artists together – the Warhol flower prints in his kitchen, for example, contrast with a horse canvas by Iranian painter Reza Lavassani – and won’t hesitate to separate elements from a three-piece work to prevent things from feeling too formal or predictable. Step inside the Dubai home here.
Ask anyone who has lived in Dubai where to find respite from the chaos of the city and they will all point you in one direction: towards Al Barari. Surrounded by a manmade forest of mature evergreen trees, olive groves and all manner of local flora, this serene haven is a mere 20-minute drive from the bustling Downtown district, but feels a world apart. “After spending the pandemic in a high-rise on Sheikh Zayed Road, I wanted to live at a gentler pace,” says the Iranian art collector and interior designer Mana Jalalian, who moved to Dubai in 2018 seeking a fresh start.
In Al Barari, she got the same feeling of being immersed in nature, but not just any house would do; Jalalian was not just looking for a home for herself, but also for her art collection, which features over 400 works. “My art collection is stored in Vancouver and Basel, but I wanted to live surrounded by it,” she explains. “Now I have a home where I’m able to change pieces around easily. One day I might have just one large piece on a wall, and the next time you visit, it will be filled with many small ones. I like to switch the art around every three months.” Step inside the Dubai home here.
- 转载自：AD(admiddleeast)
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- 国家：美国
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