The jury’s deliberations focused on originality, depth of research, clarity of vision, and the capacity of each practice to contribute meaningfully to contemporary design discourse. The resulting shortlist reflects the richness, diversity, and critical engagement that define design practice across the MENASA region today.
Rooted in heritage yet oriented toward the future, the Design Doha Prize serves as a meeting point for designers working across disciplines, materials, and scales. Beyond recognition, the Prize fosters exchange, mentorship, and sustained dialogue, positioning design as a shared language that connects generations, cultures, and ways of making. The shortlisted designers embody this spirit, demonstrating how design can be both deeply contextual and forward-looking, attentive to place while imagining new possibilities for the world ahead.
Shortlisted Designers for Design Doha Prize 2026
Following an international open call that brought together a wide range of voices, practices, and perspectives, the Design Doha Prize 2026 shortlisted designers were selected by an independent international jury of leading figures in design, culture, and academia.
Craft
Bahraini Danish
bahraini — danish is an architectural office with a wide and wandering interest in immediate surroundings, history, and culture. Founded in 2017 by Batool Alshaikh, Maitham Almubarak, and Christian Vennerstrøm Jensen, the office has outputs varying across many genres, from design objects, furniture, installations, spaces and buildings.
Bokja Collective
Named after a regional word denoting a ‘bundle’ or a piece of fabric that is used to wrap the dowry of a bride›, the Beirut-based Studio brings together creatives and craftsmen across borders to make, provoke and delight.
Hozan Zangana Studio
Hozan Zangana is a sculptural designer based in the Netherlands. Shaped by experiences of displacement, memory, and cultural continuity, his work explores the meeting point of heritage and contemporary form.
Samer Selbak
Samer Selbak is a Paris based Palestinian designer, graduated with a Master’s degree from the École des Arts Décoratifs in Product Design in 2022. His work challenges the boundaries between art and design, drawing inspiration from his Palestinian culture and its rich historical knowledge.
Shaikha Al-Sulaiti
Shaikha Al-Sulaiti is a multidisciplinary Qatari designer whose practice is rooted in cultural inquiry, material intelligence, and future-facing design. Based in Doha, she develops independent collections and curated collaborations where objects are conceived as quiet carriers of memory and agents of possibility.
Product Design
Abdulrahman Al Muftah Studio
Abdulrahman Al Muftah is an accomplished interdisciplinary artist, entrepreneur, and designer, dedicated to preserving cultural heritage and tradition through creative endeavors.
Post Design Studio
Dia Mrad
Dia Mrad is a Beirut-based artist and architect working across photography, installation, and object-making. His practice develops functional instruments that translate systems such as electricity and water into readable forms.
R.K Collective
Nila Rezaei & Christopher Krainer
Driven by a shared passion for design and social impact, Nila Rezaei and Christopher Krainer founded RK Collective in 2023, in Sydney, Australia. Together, they have worked across a variety of industries, including consumer goods, medical devices, public art, mobility, solar technology and material innovation.
Roda Medhat
Roda Medhat is a Kurdish-born artist based in Toronto, Canada working across sculpture, installation, public art, and moving image. His practice rebuilds cultural source material, including textiles, diagrams, archived objects, pop culture, and everyday forms, into structures made from light, metal, acrylic, and air.
Banou Studio
Zaid Seddiqi
Zaid Seddiqi is a Dubai-born architect and artist working between Dubai and London. Through Banou Studio, Seddiqi engineers high-fidelity speakers and designs “third-space” listening rooms using UAE-made materials like DesertBoard.
Furniture Design
Carl Gerges Architects
Carl Gerges is a multidisciplinary architect and artist based between Beirut and Paris. His work is defined by a sensitive approach to space, nature, and the ways environments shape daily life.
Tessa Sakhi
Tessa Sakhi is an architect and designer, based between Venice and Beirut.
Levent Ozruh
Levent Ozruh is an architectural designer exploring how technology can invert the built environment’s fragilities against the entropic nature of our universe. His work advocates sustainable design through open-ended architectural form, structural assembly, and spatial organisation.
Shell Homage
Rania Elkalla
Rania ElKalla is a global award winning Egyptian multidisciplinary designer with product & graphic design educational background with an experience in material science and production techniques.
Shaha Raphael
Shaha Raphael is an architect and maker based in Beirut, Lebanon, blending architecture and craft into distinctive objects and spaces. Inspired by the interplay of natural forces and materiality, Shaha’s work spans jewelry, furniture, and sculptural pieces.
Emerging Talent
Ekim Design Studio
Ekim Güney Öztürk is an industrial designer with a background in product design, working across furniture, objects, and product systems. He holds a Master’s degree in Product Design from Politecnico di Milano and has developed projects that focus on material efficiency, durability, and responsible production.
Solidified Design
Inana Abdulli
Inana Abdulli is a Syrian-Turkish architect and researcher, co-founder of Solidified Design, whose work focuses on the reinterpretation of vernacular architectural systems through computational design and digital fabrication.
Rowayda Tarek
Rowayda Tarek, is a product designer, and a graduate from the German University in Cairo.
Yasamin Shaikhi
Yasamin Shaikhi is an interdisciplinary designer with a BFA in Interior Design and an MFA in Design from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work centers on material exploration and hands-on experimentation, using existing materials in new ways to challenge conventional boundaries and spark unexpected outcomes.