The Complexity of Designing Offices Across Cultures

Ask any person in global real estate, and he or she can recite all the challenges of designing offices across cultures. But some places are more challenging than others. Take Dubai, for instance. Why Dubai? Politically stable, Dubai has developed a reputation for being a safe place for people of all nationalities to work and for companies from all over the world to do business. But, in Dubai, nationals make up only 10 percent of the workforce. So designers must not only create offices that take into account cultural norms rooted in Islamic law, they must also make sure offices appeal to the other 90 percent, who come from neighboring countries, with their own cultures, and from the headquarter countries of the multinational. Talk about challenging. Do you have any insights to add to ours?