Corporate Office Fit Out in Dubai
Category B fit-out for a 34-person financial advisory firm relocating from a legacy Cat A shell to a new 3,800-square-foot floor in a Currency House tower in DIFC. Scope: complete Cat B interior including branded reception, three meeting rooms, a boardroom, open-plan workspace for 34, a kitchen, a client waiting area and all MEP works to DEWA sign-off standard. Lease commencement date was fixed and non-negotiable. Timeline: 14 weeks from brief to DEWA sign-off and staff move-in.
01. The Brief
The client was a well-established financial advisory firm with a regional client base spanning DIFC, Abu Dhabi and the wider GCC. The firm had occupied a dated Cat A shell in a neighbouring tower for six years and was moving to its new space with a clear brief: the new office was to communicate the firm’s quality and its 20-year track record in the regional financial markets to every client who walked through the door. The reception was to be the firm’s most powerful brand statement. The boardroom was to be capable of hosting client presentations to the most senior level of GCC institutional client. The open-plan workspace was to be a genuine quality working environment for 34 professionals, not a row of desks. And the entire project was to be completed, DEWA-signed and ready for staff occupation by the first day of the lease, a hard deadline driven by the simultaneous expiry of the firm’s existing lease.
03. The Concept
The design concept was derived from a brand intelligence session with the firm’s managing partners in the first week of the commission. Three brand values emerged as the primary design drivers: established authority (the firm is not a startup and does not want to look like one: the design language must communicate depth of experience and financial gravitas); discretion (the firm’s clients include several high-net-worth individuals and family offices for whom visual discretion and understated quality are more reassuring than expressive design ambition); and precision (the firm’s work product is characterised by analytical precision and attention to detail, and the office must express this in the calibre of every surface and every detail).
The design response was a palette and material programme of absolute restraint and absolute quality: Pietra Grigia Beige limestone in a honed large format for the reception and boardroom floors; smoked oak veneer joinery throughout with 0.5mm shadow gaps as the quality standard; a palette of warm charcoal, warm white and brushed bronze at every hardware and light fitting position; and a complete absence of branded graphics or applied signage beyond the reception desk’s integrated bronze letterform. The design communicates the firm’s values entirely through material quality and spatial precision, without any decorative assistance.
The 14-week programme was the defining technical challenge of the commission, tighter than a standard DIFC Cat B programme by approximately 3 weeks. This was achieved through three programme management decisions: parallel submission of the DIFC Authority fit-out approval application and the MEP design development in week one, before the design had been finalised, using preliminary drawings that were updated as the design was resolved; off-site fabrication of all joinery items commencing in week 4 (the moment the layout was frozen) rather than the standard week 8 commencement, saving 4 weeks on the joinery delivery path; and a split-shift construction programme running 6 days per week with a night shift for noisy trades, compressing the wet trades programme from a standard 6 weeks into 4.
05. Result
The completed Currency House office is, by the standard of the financial and professional services firms that form DIFC’s tenant community, among the most credible and most precisely resolved commercial interiors in the centre. The reception, with its Pietra Grigia limestone floor, its hand-lacquered reception desk in warm charcoal with a flush-integrated bronze letterform and its paired Moooi Heracleum pendant lights over the client waiting area, communicates the quality of the firm’s practice to every arriving visitor before a word has been spoken. The boardroom, with its bookmatched American walnut wall panel framing the 98-inch 4K display and its 3-metre Cimstone Sahara quartzite conference table, has hosted client presentations to institutional investors from Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and London in the 18 months since opening, without a single AV or technical failure.
“We gave Kat Black a deadline that our previous fit-out contractor told us was impossible. They delivered on day 97 of a 98-day programme and the quality of the result exceeded everything we specified. Our clients notice the office. They comment on it. For a financial advisory firm, that is exactly the commercial message we need our space to send.”
Managing Partner
Financial Advisory Firm, DIFC
Kat Black Design Studio has completed projects across Dubai Hills Estate, Palm Jumeirah, Emirates Hills, DIFC and beyond. If you are ready to discuss your interior design, renovation, fit-out or landscaping project anywhere in Dubai or the UAE, request a complimentary consultation today, with no obligation.
Or contact us directly via WhatsApp. All enquiries receive a response within two business hours.