Middle East Interiors

At Middle East Interiors, we were lucky enough to find at least a dozen reasons to celebrate every month in each issue: be they completed projects and innovative new products, or the good news that flowed in a steady stream from the retail and hospitality sectors. These managed to stay afloat in a battered projects market.



As I write this, we are marking the one-year anniversary of one such remarkable event: the day when Mohamed Bouazizi, a poor street vendor in Tunisia, frustrated and humiliated by the harassment of government officials, set himself ablaze. No one could have foreseen the chain of events that ensued, or how one man’s life (and death) could have catalysed change across the Arab world.



So despite all the advances in the science of forecasting, there is still so much that we can’t predict. But as 2011 draws to a close, I know a few things for sure: change is inevitable and the economy is cyclical. Good times don’t last, and neither do the bad times.



We hope to be a part of your success and learning curves through the coming year. Send us your news, views and completed projects for publication. Tell us and the rest of the Middle East how your designs are making a difference.

We are going to press in the last month of what has been a very turbulent year all over the world, but more particularly in the Middle East: a year when tyrants were toppled, regimes were shaken, jobs were lost, projects stalled or cancelled, and families learnt to make do with a lot less.



And like any other year, there were moments of happiness, those pinpoints of light that pierced the darkness.