Production
Design Doha Biennale 2026
Design Doha is a biennial design platform that connects designers from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia with the world. In the run-up to the biennial, its team wanted to show the work behind it. Grain followed the preparation as a documentary series: the open call, the book, a new partnership, and the international designers invited to research the Qatar Museums collection. Four episodes and a set of designer profiles, filmed over a couple of months.
- Client
- Design Doha
- Role
- Direction, Post-Production, Content Creation, Motion Graphic, Design, Photography
- Date
- 2025
- Collaborators
- Yazid Taki, Rhassan Rachdi
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One Question, Many Languages
The first episode asks participants from across the region what design means to them. Each answers in one word and in their native language, says “Design Doha” the way they would say it at home, and points to a design from their own culture. Filmed over three days, it shows the platform’s wider MENASA reach through the people in it.
Behind the Open Call
Episodes two to four follow the preparation from the inside. The Prize Specialist explains what the Design Doha Prize is for and why designers should apply. The Arabic edition of Arab Design Now gets a fast-paced introduction. Vitra’s Regional Director announces the partnership on camera in under 40 seconds.
A Book, Announced
The Arabic edition of Arab Design Now needed an announcement with the pace of the book itself. We made it a motion graphics piece that moves quickly between pages, images and type, and keeps changing its rhythm so the viewer never settles on one look. Our reference was the way THNDR Studio and DavidplusJim conveyed the energy behind a piece in their reel for Julia de Blaauw: fast, mixed in media, and cut to the sound
2026 Public Design Commissions
THE COMMISSIONS
Falajscape, Studio by Three
Shoreline, Platau
Salsabil, New South
Cooling Pots, Haitam Daoudi and Óscar Cruz
Palm Construct, Abdalla Almulla
Nesting, Tara Sakhi and Diorama
MALATH, Takteel
An Ode to the Abandoned, Latifa Alkhayat and Boonserm Premthada
Mountain / Crater, bahraini — danish
Coral Majlis, MEAN
An experience to learn from
The commissions start from vernacular materials: ceramic, terracotta, palm, stone, earth, stainless steel. Each one behaves differently, and each team works with it differently. We filmed ten teams, based in ten countries, at the point where an idea becomes a decision: the test piece, the model, the conversation with the fabricator. We filmed the whole as raw as the experience was, so that polished steel, wet clay and woven palm each read as what they are.
Many of these conversations with these designer also inspired us as Grain to think beyond what we thought were previous boundaries to our creations. We learned a lot.
Next project
A Winter at Heenat Salma