#7 / Small Talk with Noura Al Kaabi

We had the pleasure of having Lukas Scherrer, an incredible industrial designer, with us for a few days in Abu Dhabi, spending time with the team and sharing incredibly valuable insights on design, process and how to make really really cool objects. Here’s just a tiny bit of the goodness that we go from his visit.

Our first special edition Small Talk is…special, because it’s live from the newly opened Tokyo Outpost, right in the heart of one of the world’s most interesting cities.Nuno, the one who normally interviews is on the other side of the mic, unpacking what we’re doing in Tokyo and how we hope it will contribute to contemporary design in Abu Dhabi.

If you’ve been around us for a while you know that we’re huge fans of Vitra and the world of good design they’ve crafted around themselves. So it was very cool to have Vitra VP Heiko Stahl join Nuno at the Small Talk table and chat through everything from design to the future of offices. He also had really cool socks, which you can't see on the audio, but you can imagine - they were orange. Enjoy.

If you’re going to talk design, art, culture, architecture and the identity of Abu Dhabi and the UAE then one person you have to have at the microphone is Her Excellency Noura al Kaabi. Her influence and impact in shaping the creative scene here is exceptional and this Small Talk was the perfect setting to explore a little bit of that.

After a few near misses (good ones, not bad ones) we finally managed to get Nuno at the table with Kjetil Thorsen, co-founder of Snøhetta, and someone who we greatly admire.Having heard a lot of good conversations between Kjetil and Nuno over the past couple of years it is great to finally have one on tape, recorded live at Final Draft 2025

If there is one guarantee in life it’s that any project that involves Rasmus will be 78% more fun and interesting. It’s generally the same rule for conversations with him, which is why we had to sit him at the Small Talk table and press record.

It’s still quite surreal that we get to work on projects with Norm after so many years admiring their work from a distance, and it’s even more surreal that we can just call them in for a Small Talk and chat architecture with them. But here we are and here are Peter and Nuno discussing the Norm Architects approach to their designs and the intention behind it all.

It’s not every day you get to sit down with a creative leader of Rebecca Bay’s calibre, but this day was the day. Here’s a look behind the scenes at one of Finlands most iconic brands, with one of the world’s most well respected creative directors.

This episode we’re joined by our new friends Spacon and X, discussing our connection through multidisciplinary design, how you can define ‘craft’ in the modern age and that timeless design maybe doesn’t mean what we thought it did.

Come with us on a conversation adventure as we sit down and talk design, craft, process and many other things with our friends who pass through the studio. We’re easing into our first Small Talk with Eli from Snøhetta, someone who we’ve had many good conversations with, just never around a microphone. Enjoy!