DESIGN AS HOMAGE

“In the living room, a bench is an additional piece. It’s not a must. A sofa is a must. A designer choosing an additional piece is looking for something that’s outstanding. So I had to make it a masterpiece,” designer Majid Al Bastaki explains his first furniture piece, a bench he named Palm Repose.

The bench is a palm trunk—locally sourced, reflecting the responsible design ethos—split in half lengthwise. Al Bastaki had observed farmers resting against the trunks of fallen palm trees. “But they’re spiky,” he says. By contrast, the bench gains comfort from a beige linen cushion, held in place by a rope of palm fibre. The bench sits on black metal legs that are deceptively slender—they must support the 70-80 kilogrammes that the half-trunk weighs. “I used my background in architectural engineering to find how to keep the trunk size while keeping the legs small and thin, so the trunk looks as if it’s floating,” he says.

The Sharjah native comes to design after making a name for himself as an architecture photographer. He will graduate from the University of Sharjah in June with a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering. “I’ve loved architecture since I was young,” he says.

Fatma Al Mahmoud, guest curator of the UAE Designer Exhibition at Dubai Design Week in November, where Palm Repose debuted, encouraged him to design a unique piece for the show, to experience something new through product design. He already has orders.

He chose the theme of his first design because “as locals, we love the palm tree.” The dates provide food, the fronds are woven into daan panels for ceilings or room dividers or safeefah baskets or mats. But the trunks themselves aren’t used. Palm Repose fills that gap. —Catherine Mazy