At Zayed National Museum, design is not treated as a finishing layer. It becomes a way of reading culture. Inside the UAE’s newly unveiled national museum in Saadiyat Cultural District Abu Dhabi, Agata Kurzela studio was appointed to lead the creative direction, interior design, curatorship and FF&E across public, VIP, hospitality and research spaces. The brief was ambitious. The studio was asked to create interiors that could sit in dialogue with the architecture while expressing Emirati culture through contemporary materials, spatial gestures and artistic language. As the studio explains, “The idea was not to present history, but to spatially interpret it.”
That approach gives the project its emotional depth. Across approximately 3,000 square metres, each room becomes a cultural chapter shaped by time, ritual and material memory. On arrival, Majlis Al Shaheen reinterprets the Emirati tradition of welcoming guests with gahwa, drawing from coffee, dates, safeefah weaving, enamel pots, metal doors and camel references. Warm tones, textured surfaces and bespoke details turn hospitality into atmosphere.
On the first floor, the meeting spaces are organised around a central courtyard and informed by the al durour calendar, the traditional system that maps the year through climatic and ecological phases. Majlis Al Hurr 1 reflects Al Sheta, or winter, with muted greens, desert bloom tones and embroidered motifs of rain and shrubs. Majlis Al Hurr 2 moves into the brightness and contrast of Al Qaith, the season of extreme heat. The Boardroom takes inspiration from Al Saif, or summer, translating climate into a formal spatial identity.
Throughout, the interiors avoid literal storytelling. “Cultural meaning is not illustrated but embedded within the tactility of surfaces, the weight of objects, and the atmospheres produced through light and proportion,” the studio notes. Wool, rope, ceramic, camel leather, metal and stone form the project’s material language, grounding the museum in the region without turning heritage into cliché. The Research Library offers one of the strongest moments. Overlooking the monumental Magan Boat, its black and white palette, semi-raw wool, burnished bronze ladders and custom shelving connect directly to the material logic of Bedouin tents and tools. It feels graphic, grounded and contemplative.
Collaboration sits at the heart of the project. Agata Kurzela studio developed the overall design language while working with Emirati and regional designers, makers and artists. Zuleya wove the carpets. Loretta Bilinskaite developed custom tarboush tassels. Abdalla Al Mulla, Aljoud Lootah, Latifa Saeed, Omar Al Gurg, Roudha Al Shamsi, Alya Al Ghefeli, Khalid Shafar, One Third Studio, Irthi, Afra Al Dhaheri, Juma Al Haj, Michael Rice and Stephanie Neville all contributed to the layered identity of the spaces. The result is rich but restrained, contemporary but rooted. Designing inside a national monument required humility as much as presence. At Zayed National Museum, memory is not simply displayed. It is built into the room.
