Dubai-based luxury e-commerce platform Ounass was founded in 2016 by influential entrepreneur Khalid Al Tayer, and forms part of the Al Tayer Group‘s elaborate retail portfolio. As of late, the online retailer has introduced Ounass Stage, a brick and mortar equivalent at its home base which ambitiously aims to connect its e-commerce fame with experiential retail, cultural exchange and community. The retail space occupies a newly built concrete structure in the city’s residential district of Jumeirah. The interior design, created by Berlin-based design practice VAUST Studio, is fully geared towards its multi-faceted role, taking on a striking guise along the way. In stark contrast with traditional luxury retail settings, Ounass Stage boasts a raw and understated aesthetic reminiscent of a European underground club. Anchoring the austere design codes is the notion ‘Alternate Abundance’, which has been translated into an architectural language informed by brutalism and modernism, and a concise palette of industrial materials, notably concrete, galvanised steel and glass blocks. Upon entering Ounass Stage, shoppers move through the elongated space toward an exit positioned on the opposite side of the building. An alternative arrival sequence connects the project directly to the basement parking via elevator, allowing the space to function simultaneously as retail environment, gallery and event platform.

Open and predominantly uncluttered, the store’s back wall is the very core of the design’s spatial articulation—it’s clad in shiny metal and concrete, while also integrating all operational and service-oriented functions into a single continuous volume: a kitchen, stock room with integrated lift, staff workspace, toilets, changing rooms, and even a sizeable meeting room. Two staircases, encased in protruding glass block volumes, add lightness and translucency to the heavy material material palette. An interesting and unusual decorative element are a number of recessed sand pits, albeit covered with a walkable glass surface, across the retail space, containing a specially sourced sand from the desert in neighbouring Sharjah. As such, the design embeds, and quite literally so, an almost spiritual element. The fitting rooms ooze intimacy and seclusion, and come with dark walnut and soft carpeting across floors and walls. The newly opened Ounass Stage stocks curated women’s and men’s collections by leading brands from the Middle East and across planet, including Yassmin Saleh, Saint Laurent, Amina Muaddi, Pucci, LOEWE, The Attico and MSGM. As said, Ounass Stage is concepted as an evolving retail platform for contemporary storytelling, and the store opening comes with a six-month residency of New York City-based cult brand Aimé Leon Dore. © superfuture