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For the past few weeks, PUBLIC’s Dubai Mall outpost has been something other than a restaurant. Vinyl spins in a dedicated Listening Room built with RAW Music Store ME. Vitra furniture, styled with Dhow Architectural Solutions, turns the floor into somewhere you’d actually want to linger. On Sundays, a Creative Run Club powered by New Balance sends a pack of designers, photographers and creatives out into the city before doubling back for breakfast and conversation. This is Duette+, a month-long Cultural Clubhouse dreamt up by Duette Studio. ts founders insist, not a pop-up.
The idea has been years in the making. Duette Studio co-founders Fuad Ali and Rahat Kunakunova have long hosted artists, designers and musicians at their own home and rooftop through Dubai’s winter season; Duette+ is that same instinct, scaled up and handed over to the wider creative community. Staged in partnership with PUBLIC, a relationship the pair have quietly built over three years, the clubhouse runs from 8 July to 2 August, closing out with the same question it opened with: what happens when you give the city’s creatives a room they can keep coming back to?
As Duette+ enters its final week, we sit with Ali to reflect on what nearly a month of programming revealed about the city’s appetite for culture, and why the goal was never to be the biggest space in the room, just one people return to.
ICON MENA: Duette+ isn’t a pop-up. How would you describe it instead?
ALI: We believe a space by creatives, for creatives, is not only important right now, but necessary. Earlier this year, many of us found ourselves rethinking our plans, our priorities and how we wanted to move forward. Like everyone else, our plans for 2026 suddenly felt less important than creating something meaningful for the community around us.
Duette+ isn’t a new idea. For the past few years, Rahat and I have been hosting artists, designers, musicians and friends at our home and rooftop during the winter. This time, we wanted to open that experience to the wider creative community that calls this city home and was looking for an outlet to keep creating and connecting.
So no, Duette+ isn’t a pop-up. It is a reunion of culture builders, artists, designers, photographers and filmmakers coming together to do what they do best.
A month-long clubhouse inside Dubai Mall is a deliberately interesting proposition. Why there, rather than somewhere with existing creative traffic?
Why not? We live near Burj Al Arab, so if you have ever joined one of the sessions at our home, that is usually the view. Now we have Burj Khalifa as our new view. There is clearly something about the two Burjs that we love.
Jokes aside, Duette+ could have happened anywhere, in Al Quoz, Alserkal or a warehouse somewhere. But Rahat and I spent more than ten years working inside malls with luxury brands. We know the prestige, visibility and audience that these locations give international brands.
If we are bringing local artists and brands together to tell their stories and showcase their work, why shouldn’t they be given the same space and visibility?
How was the collaboration with PUBLIC?
I’m so glad you asked this because we have a history with PUBLIC, SALT and Independent Food Company. Exactly three years ago, we took over this same space for one day and more than 800 people showed up. Two years ago, we took over the SALT pop-up at the Museum of the Future and welcomed more than 3,000 people in a single day. This is a relationship we have been building naturally for years.
When we decided it was time to take what we had been doing privately and bring it out in public, PUBLIC was the obvious collaborator. A special shout-out to Amal Al Marri, one of the coolest people and someone we have considered a friend for a long time. Amal, Deem and Madawi are cultural enablers in the truest sense. Everything they do has the community at heart. Creativity needs space, and they always find a way to make room for it.
The collaboration is very natural. I say, “Amal, I have an idea,” and she says, “Go on.” Then she adds something, and we build it together. You can’t force that kind of relationship.
PUBLIC also lost its Instagram account earlier this year and has been rebuilding its community organically through its “We Got Hacked” campaign. They have always supported the creative community, so we are also happy to help push their platform forward as we build this together.
What are the key takeaways after nearly a month?
Oh God, this answer is not going to do the question justice, but I will try.
The biggest takeaway is that the creative community is always looking for spaces where they can showcase their work, not only during art season or festival season. They need spaces that are open, active and accessible throughout the year. We also learned a lot from the audience. People didn’t just come, take a picture and leave. They stayed. They worked from the space, listened to music, joined conversations, discovered artists they didn’t know and came back again with friends. Different generations and creative communities who may not normally meet were suddenly sharing the same room.
It showed us that Dubai is not lacking creative energy or audiences. What we need are more consistent spaces where that energy can come together. And we couldn’t have done this without our programming partners who believed in the idea and helped bring it to life. RAW Music brought the Hi-Fi equipment and helped us create the listening experience, Vitra filled the clubhouse with furniture that made people feel at home, and New Balance powered our Sunday runs for the Creative Run Club. They didn’t simply provide support; they trusted the idea, shared what they had and enabled us to bring it to life without asking for anything more in return.
We also learned what a small Duette team, supported by a group of university interns on their summer break, can achieve. Imagine what we could do with a full team and a permanent space behind it. Rahat and I talk about this a lot: Duette+ isn’t trying to be the biggest event space. We are trying to be the space everyone comes back to. And that is very important to us.
This is the final week of Duette+, so if you are in the city, come by, spend some time with us and experience it before we wrap up on 2 August.
