Boosted by mega-projects such as Expo 2020 Dubai, and a steady stream of homes, offices, and mixed-use developments, the UAE has a massive $820-billion construction project pipeline, said leading industry experts, citing a Meed report, ahead of Cityscape Abu Dhabi expo.

A premier property exhibition, Cityscape Abu Dhabi kicks off tomorrow (April 17) at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre and will run for the next two days.

Interior design innovation will drive this big construction boom and help transform visitor and resident experiences, stated the experts.

The wider Middle East and North Africa’s (Mena) project pipeline is worth $1.6 trillion, according to BMI Research.

Increasingly, Middle East projects are integrating interior design from the beginning of the project design, with innovations serving as a key differentiator for enhancing daily lives, argued a senior official of global architecture and design consultancy Hunter Douglas.

"Interior designers across the UAE and the Middle East are pioneering the approach of integrating innovations, such as felt ceilings, from the design phase to transform the lived experience inside buildings," remarked Santhosh Vallil, the sales manager for the Middle East at Hunter Douglas.

"Cityscape Abu Dhabi is a key platform to educate the market how felt can provide a safe, cost-effective, attractive, and sustainable approach to ceilings," he noted.

Ahead of Cityscape Abu Dhabi, Hunter Douglas is seeing strong Middle East interest in its HeartFelt innovative modular and linear felt ceiling system. HeartFelt recently won a prestigious Red Dot Award, and is 100 per cent recyclable and certified cradle-to-cradle.

Showing the strong results of felt ceilings, Dutch confectionery company Brand Masters called on architecture firm, Van Oers Weijers Architecten BNA, to deliver a design and build of high quality, inside and outside the building.

Brand Masters became one of the world’s first companies to deploy HeartFelt in its entrance, hall, and showroom.

“Sometimes the architect’s role is to take risks and contribute a new material or a new solution,” explained Jeroen Weijers, the architect of Van Oers Weijers Architecten BNA.

“This sense of quality is expressed in the building materials we used, the finishing on the inside and the clean lines of the whole design,” he stated.

Weijers pointed out that HeartFelt’s sustainable and acoustic qualities also played a role in the choice for this ceiling system.

“We applied HeartFelt mostly in the representative spaces, where customers and prospective clients are received, for example. Good acoustics are important in those spaces,” he added.-TradeArabia News Service