Founder + Design Director

Zahir Abdul Latheef moves through the world as a cartographer of possibility, sketching futures onto walls and mapping emotions into light. Raised among the monsoon-washed streets of Kerala, tempered by the desert clarity of Muscat, and now rooted in the electric cadence of Dubai Design District, he treats geography as palette and journey as medium.

Trained as a civil engineer yet compelled by the poetry of space, Zahir founded Design Nomad in 2015 to explore the frontier where construction science meets artistic instinct. More than two hundred realised interiors—boutiques that hum like tuned instruments, villas that breathe with their inhabitants, workplaces calibrated for imagination—carry his fingerprint: quiet precision, fearless shadow play, and a conviction that every material shelters a story waiting to be told.

Concept design stands at the heart of his practice. Clients arrive seeking form; he offers direction. He listens for the unspoken hopes coded in a brief, then drafts narratives in BIM, and hand sketches until the tale reveals itself in light, texture, and proportion. His mastery of lighting design, furniture craft, material science, and ergonomic drawing turns abstract ideas into tactile realities that feel inevitable once built.

Recognition followed the work. In 2019 Dossier Construction Magazine named him Interior Designer of the Year, citing his gift for weaving cultural memory into contemporary typologies. International design fairs invite him to speak, not for accolades but for conversations that spark future experiments. He mentors his team through weekly R&D studios and champions a culture where talent grows through disciplined curiosity.

Zahir’s philosophy dissolves the boundary between aesthetic and ethical. A space, in his view, must serve the spirit as much as the eye, inviting users to live, work, and gather with greater intention. He approaches sustainability as a craft decision—selecting durable timbers, tuning daylight, orchestrating airflow—so beauty ages with grace rather than fading with fashion.

Beyond the studio he chronicles his obsessions: the chiaroscuro of Renaissance paintings, the mechanical elegance of vintage automobiles, the rhythm of dawn fitness sessions shared with lifelong friends. These influences seep back into his projects, forging unexpected synapses between disciplines.

Today Design Nomad operates from a shadow-lined atelier in Dubai, yet its outlook remains nomadic. The firm now embraces procurement, project management, and emerging digital tools, extending design stewardship from drawing board to final bolt. Each commission, regardless of scale, is an invitation to compose a micro-cosmos where users sense their own stories amplified.

Zahir steps into every new project with a single question: How might space teach us to dream bigger? The answers keep evolving, yet the compass stays true—toward authenticity, toward craft, toward spaces that feel as though they have always existed in our collective imagination and finally found their architect.

Read his blogs at Stories.
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