Rising Talents Lebanon : a new generation of designers

Anastasia Nysten

Designer

Born in Ottawa, Canada, to a Finnish father and a Lebanese mother, Anastasia Nysten grew up in Finland, France and Lebanon. And she chose Lebanon to pursue her degree in Industrial Design at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, and later to start her career with Karen Chekerdjian. After three years in London, where she worked with Michael Anastassiades, she established her own studio in 2015. Today, working from Beirut and Dubai, Anastasia expresses her multicultural background through her designs, both for furniture and interiors.

Carla Baz

Designer

Half-French, half-Lebanese, Carla Baz started studying at ESAG Penninghen in Paris, before she went on to earn a Master’s in Product Design for the Luxury Industry in 2010 from ECAL Lausanne, where she met many designers, including Fernando Campana and Ronan Bouroullec. In London, she completed her training by joining Zaha Hadid Architects and subsequently decided to start her solo career, an initiative that was soon rewarded by the Boghossian Foundation.

Carlo Massoud

Designer

After he graduated from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts and ECAL Lausanne, Carlo Massoud moved to New York to learn the ropes. He joined Nasser Nakib Architect to oversee bespoke furniture design for the firm’s high-end residential projects. His solo career began in 2014, when he showed his Dolls project at the Carwan Gallery, a thinly veiled allusion to the frictions over the chador.

Karl Chucri & Rami Boushdid

Designers & Founders - Studio Caramel

Karl Chucri and Rami Boushdid met when they were both studying interior design at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut. After earning their Master’s – from IED Madrid for Karl and Politecnico di Milano for Rami –, they met again in Lebanon and decided to establish Studio Caramel in 2016. Their personal experiences in various architecture firms have certainly become an influence in their approach to furniture design. Working on commission, they often create pièces that are shaped by a specific context, but never compromise on the furniture’s capacity to ‘fill a room’.

Marc Dibeh

Designer

After studying at the École Nationale Supérieure de Paris Val De Seine, Marc Dibeh chose to return to Beirut to pursue a Master’s in Product Design at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. After a three-year experience working alongside Marc Baroud, he went on to establish his own studio in 2009. Today, the two men still regularly collaborate, most notably on Dibeh’s Wires series, which took him to DesignMiami in 2013. Featured in institutions like Gallery S. Bensimon in Paris or Seeds London Gallery, his work skilfully plays on the notion of narrative, as exemplified by the five mirrors from his Please, Don’t Tell Mom range, specially designed for the Art Factum Gallery after he broke one there by mistake.

Paola Sakr

Designer

Officially, Paola Sakr is a designer, at least that is what the product design degree she earned in 2016 from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts says. But actually, her expressions encompass a much broader field of disciplines, from photography to art. This capacity for multidisciplinary creation have allowed her to satisfy her taste for innovation and her curiosity – the source of every one of her projects.

Joy Mardini

Director & Founder - Joy Mardini Design Gallery

Oscar Duboÿ

Journalist

Based in Paris, Oscar Duboÿ is an Italian-French freelance journalist specialising in design and interior architecture. He continues to work with AD since its beginning, not to mention his collaborations with La Gazette Drouot, TLmag and his editorial consultancy activities for luxury and auction houses. Today, he is more interested in the interaction between art and design collections.