Dubai | United Arab Emirates
unbox API world tower - Phase 1
Client
Unbox INC
Date
April 2024
Services
Interior Design
Dubai | United Arab Emirates
unbox API world tower
Phase 1
Client
Unbox INC
Date
April 2024
Services
Interior Design
The Brief
API World Tower occupies a particular place in Dubai’s urban fabric — ground floor and mezzanine of a former bank branch, connected by an open staircase, sitting directly opposite the World Trade Centre in the heart of the city, steps from the metro. It is a location with energy, footfall, and history. The brief was to match it. Unbox came to Ten Eight with a vision for something beyond a conventional co-working space. This was to be a creative incubator — a community built around the belief that when entrepreneurs, independent operators, and start-ups share the same environment, something greater than the sum of its parts emerges. The space needed to host large numbers of users across multiple functions simultaneously: a reception, collaboration areas transformable for events, a café bar, meeting rooms, member offices, hot-desking zones, phone booths, labs, a training room, and storage — all within a single coherent spatial experience. Phase 2 will extend into an adjacent building a two-minute walk away, further expanding the Unbox community in this part of the city.
The Approach
We returned, as always with Unbox, to the brand’s DNA. The logo — a playful assembly of triangular forms that appear to unravel like origami — carries within it a philosophy of limitless possibility. That idea became the governing design language of the entire floor, expressed from the ground up and the ceiling down. It sets the tone immediately: this is not a generic co-working space. The same geometric language continues underfoot in the bold, multicoloured carpet — grey, charcoal, and vibrant yellow fragments assembled into a dynamic patterned field that energises the entire ground floor.
The Approach
The most deliberate departure was colour. Where most Unbox branches carry teal as the primary accent, API World Tower introduces a bright, vibrant yellow — a considered creative risk that has since been validated by the community that inhabits the space, who describe it as fresh, energetic, and distinct from anything else in the Unbox portfolio. The colour runs through consistently: the sculptural angular reception desk sits against a lush living plant wall and illuminated Unbox signage; yellow hot-desking workstations carry yellow accent trims at panel level — the brand colour present at every scale from architecture to detail.
The Outcome
API World Tower Phase 1 is a co-working environment that earns its location — a space with the energy, identity, and flexibility to match one of Dubai’s most central addresses. The vibrant yellow accent has become a talking point and a point of pride for the community that inhabits it, proving that even within an established brand language, the right creative risk pays off. Phase 2 is underway. The Unbox community at World Tower is growing — and Ten Eight is growing it with them.
