Chafic Mekawi: Translating Cultural Codes Into Design

Chafic Mekawi and his modular Nasab Bookcase

What does a bookshelf remember? For architect and digital artist Chafic Mekawi, the answer lies somewhere between spatial rhythm and storytelling. Chafic Mekawi designs with a quiet conviction that tradition is not fixed, but a living system. His latest work — the modular Nasab Bookcase — reimagines furniture as both personal archive and architectural statement.

When beginning a new piece or project do you sketch first, model in 3D or begin with material exploration? What’s your instinctive entry point?

As my work is often driven by story or exploration, the design process typically begins with a question. The process is inherently iterative and research-led, where design becomes a means of inquiry rather than just execution. With Nasab, the question emerged from a simple observation: while buying books for décor isn’t a novel concept, the bookcase itself has become passive — a stagnant backdrop rather than a statement. That led me to ask: How do we hold memory and knowledge in space? And more specifically, how can a bookcase reflect the evolving identity of its owner while honouring Arab heritage?

From there, the process became an interplay between sketching, material research, and 3D modeling. Each medium reveals something different. I don’t follow a single entry point — the question drives the method. Whether it begins with a hand-drawn form or a digital study, it always circles back to narrative and context.

Your life and work move between different cities and countries — each with distinct rhythms and visual languages. How do these geographies shape your design intuition, especially when weaving traditional Middle Eastern references into contemporary contexts?

Living and working between London, Lebanon, and the UAE has given me a deep sensitivity to place — not just physically, but culturally and visually. Lebanon offers a sense of emotional density and layered memory. It’s where I first understood design as something tied to storytelling. London sharpened my conceptual lens. It taught me to think critically about design as a form of discourse. The UAE, particularly Dubai, is where these threads come together, a place that constantly inspires me to blend tradition with reinvention.

When looking into Arab and Middle Eastern culture, I aim to move beyond surface motifs. I’m more interested in translating cultural codes — geometry, symbolism, ritual — into contemporary design languages. Whether it’s through modularity, material choice, or spatial rhythm, I try to reflect tradition not as something fixed, but as something living and evolving.

Designers usually struggle to translate conceptual ideas into commercially viable pieces. How do you approach functionality without diluting the integrity of your vision?

I try not to treat function and concept as separate categories. If a design piece is culturally meaningful, it should also be intuitively usable — otherwise it risks being only decorative. For me, integrity comes from clarity: the clearer the concept, the easier it is to distill that idea into a usable form.

With the Nasab Bookcase, for example, the concept was about framing knowledge and personal history — but it also had to function as an elegant, modular storage system. I designed it so that the form expresses the narrative, but it also stands up to everyday use. In that sense, commercial viability isn’t a compromise — it’s a test of the strength of the concept.