Nada Debs

Nada Debs is a Levantine designer working between Beirut, Dubai and Osaka. Raised in Japan and trained as an interior architect at the Rhode Island School of Design, she founded her eponymous studio in 2000 and has since worked across furniture, objects and interiors, with craft as the thread tying her to her Arab roots.

Her method, which she calls Handmade & Heartmade, treats the hand as a carrier of memory: marquetry, inlay and pattern become ways of speaking across cultures rather than decoration. The studio’s In Assembly installation at We Design Beirut 2025 turned backgammon marquetry into a walk-through experience, with master craftsman Nabil Haswani demonstrating the Funquetry and Marquetry Mania collections live. She also works with institutions such as the Institut du Monde Arabe and Design Doha.