Interview with Alena Bulataya

Creativity was part of my life long before I knew that design could become a profession. As a child, I was constantly drawing, dancing, singing, playing musical instruments and taking part in art competitions. Drawing came particularly naturally to me.

For several years, however, I was preparing for a completely different path. My mother is a dentist, and from the eighth through the eleventh grade I studied in a specialized chemistry and biology program and seriously considered medicine.

Eventually, I realized very clearly that medicine was not my path. What genuinely interested me was creation — imagining something that did not yet exist and giving it form.

I entered the Belarusian State Academy of Arts to study Interior Design and began working in a professional design studio while still a student. That combination of academic education and real projects became the foundation of my career.

My first priority is always space planning and functionality. A beautiful interior that does not work is not good design. I study how people enter a space, move through it, interact, what they see and how naturally the environment supports its purpose.

The second priority is human perception. I constantly ask myself: What should a person feel here? A home, restaurant, hotel, beauty space and medical clinic require completely different emotional responses. Light, proportions, materials, color, acoustics and objects all influence behavior and emotion.

Stylistically, I would describe my approach as eclectic. I enjoy mixing periods, cultures, materials, art and unexpected objects. I appreciate elegance, but I do not like predictability. Even in restrained interiors, I usually look for something that breaks perfection just enough to create identity and emotion.

Primarily, pleasure and curiosity. After more than seventeen years in this profession, I have never regretted choosing it.

Design has become so integrated into my life that I do not always distinguish between observing the world as a person and observing it as a designer. I can be walking through a city, watching a film, visiting an exhibition or having dinner and suddenly notice a proportion, material, behavior or detail that connects with something in my mind.

The profession can be demanding and exhausting, but the fundamental feeling has never disappeared: I genuinely enjoy creating something that did not exist before.

And perhaps that is what still keeps me in love with design — every new project begins with uncertainty and the possibility of discovering an answer I have not found before.

Working across different countries and cultures has probably shaped me more than any single stylistic influence.

I was born and educated in Belarus, later developed a significant part of my practice in the Middle East, and today I am based in the United States while continuing to work internationally.

Each environment added something different to my professional language. Belarus gave me a strong European foundation, discipline and respect for craftsmanship. The Middle East expanded my understanding of scale, luxury, hospitality and ambition. The United States introduced another kind of creative freedom and extraordinary cultural diversity.

Moving between these worlds taught me not to assume that there is one universally correct design answer. Culture, climate, lifestyle and business all change the brief. Some of the most interesting design, in my experience, happens between cultures.

My growth has never been about simply producing more projects. It has been about expanding the scale and complexity of what I am capable of creating without diluting the identity of the work.

I began with interiors and gradually moved into larger residential, hospitality, healthcare and commercial projects, and later into furniture and product design. INCLINE was an important step because it allowed me to think beyond a single interior and create an object capable of living independently in many different environments.

The next chapter is about developing AB Design Buro into a broader international creative practice and making product design a serious parallel direction.

My dream is a project where I could develop an entire creative universe — architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, objects, art, graphics, scent and sound — around one central idea. A boutique hotel or hospitality destination would be an ideal format for that level of creative authorship.

My advice is not particularly romantic: work a lot, stay hungry and do not feel sorry for yourself.

Start working on real projects as early as possible. I joined a professional design studio while I was still studying because I wanted to understand the profession beyond academic theory. Real clients, deadlines, construction problems and mistakes taught me enormously.

Train your eye constantly. Study architecture and interiors, but also art, fashion, cinema, objects, cultures and human behavior. Travel whenever possible. Visit exhibitions. Become interested in things outside your profession.

Most importantly, do things before you feel completely ready. You will make mistakes. Good. Make them while moving. Talent matters, but consistency, curiosity and the ability to keep learning matter much more than young designers sometimes want to hear.

Protect the balance between creativity and discipline.

Our profession is often romanticized as pure inspiration, but successful design requires much more. You need imagination, but also organization, technical knowledge, persistence, communication skills and the ability to take responsibility for decisions.

I have also learned that creative freedom does not come from chaos. It comes from structure. When responsibilities are clear, the team is strong and trust exists between the designer and client, much more energy becomes available for actual creativity.

Remain curious outside your own discipline. Architecture, art, psychology, technology, fashion, business and culture constantly influence one another.

And do not become too comfortable with your previous success. Experience should make your work deeper, not safer.

My days are structured, but rarely identical.

As Founder and Creative Director, I may spend part of the day reviewing drawings and visualizations with the team, developing concepts, speaking with clients, coordinating consultants and suppliers, selecting materials or making decisions related to projects under construction.

My role has changed significantly over the years. I no longer need to personally execute every element of a project. My responsibility is to establish the central idea, make the key creative decisions and ensure that the original concept remains coherent through hundreds of technical and practical decisions.

I also deliberately protect parts of life outside work. Sport, walking, exhibitions, cinema, travel and relationships are important to me. I have become less interested in simply managing time and more interested in managing attention.

I follow trends because they are part of the cultural conversation, but I try not to design from trends.

We are currently seeing an interesting movement away from visually perfect but impersonal spaces toward interiors with greater individuality, tactility, art, craftsmanship and emotional depth. Technology and artificial intelligence are simultaneously transforming how quickly ideas can be researched, visualized and communicated.

I find that combination fascinating. Technology is becoming more powerful while people increasingly value things that feel human, individual and difficult to reproduce.

For me, trends are useful as information, not instruction. If a project is built around a fashionable image rather than a meaningful idea, it can become dated very quickly. I would rather understand why something is becoming relevant and decide whether that reason belongs in the project.

Good design achieves what it was created to achieve.

It should answer the client’s needs, work functionally, be executed well and create the intended experience for the people who use it.

I also believe good design is often felt before it is understood. When you enter a truly successful space, there can be an immediate sense of coherence before your analytical mind identifies the planning, proportions, lighting, materials and details responsible for it.

Ultimately, design should improve life in some functional, emotional or meaningful way. Otherwise, it risks becoming only an image.

Beauty matters enormously to me, but beauty without purpose is not enough.

There is a moment when every important decision begins to support the same central idea.

That does not necessarily mean there is nothing more that could be changed. Designers can continue adjusting almost indefinitely. The real question is whether another change makes the project stronger or simply makes it different.

For me, a design is ready when function, proportion, atmosphere, materials and detail feel coherent; when nothing important feels unresolved, but nothing unnecessary is asking for attention either.

Experience helps enormously with recognizing that point. Earlier in a career, there is a temptation to keep adding. With time, you become more comfortable removing, simplifying and knowing when to stop.

A finished design should feel inevitable — as if the final solution could hardly have been otherwise.

One of the largest and most complex projects in my recent practice is ELEMENTAL Day Surgery Clinic in Dubai, a healthcare and aesthetic medicine project of approximately 1,900 square meters.

The project developed over approximately four years and evolved far beyond a conventional interior renovation into an extensive transformation of the building.

Healthcare design is particularly demanding because aesthetics are only one part of the equation. Medical functionality, engineering, regulations, circulation, hygiene, patient privacy, staff operations and technology all have to coexist with the emotional experience of the patient.

For me, the most interesting challenge was creating an environment that feels sophisticated and contemporary without losing the sense of trust and calm that healthcare requires.

Projects of this scale teach you that design is not simply the creation of an image. It is the coordination of an extraordinarily complex system around a clear human experience.

I do not have one favorite designer because I am interested in very different forms of authorship.

Kelly Wearstler inspires me through her fearlessness with color, material, art and composition. Dimore Studio creates incredibly layered, cinematic environments where atmosphere is as important as individual objects. Harry Nuriev and Crosby Studios interest me for conceptual boldness, irony and the willingness to challenge conventional ideas of beauty and value.

These practices are visually very different, but they share something I deeply respect: authorship.

You recognize that there is a mind behind the work. The projects could not easily have been created by somebody else.

For me, that is one of the highest achievements in a creative profession — not simply developing a recognizable aesthetic formula, but developing a recognizable way of thinking.

My lifestyle and my design practice are deeply connected because I live and work internationally.

Travel is particularly important to me. Changing environments resets my perception. New York activates one part of my visual language, Miami another, Dubai another, while European cities bring completely different references and rhythms.

I am also constantly absorbing architecture, exhibitions, art, fashion, cinema, restaurants, hotels and ordinary human behavior. I do not consciously collect references to reproduce later. I prefer to experience things and allow unexpected connections to form over time.

My cultural background works similarly. I carry a European foundation, years of professional experience in the Middle East and my current life in the United States.

I think this constant movement between cultures has made me less interested in stylistic purity and more interested in intelligent combinations.

My business philosophy is simple: creative ambition has to survive reality.

A design studio cannot function only as an artistic practice. Behind every successful project are budgets, contracts, deadlines, technical documentation, engineering, procurement, logistics, construction and many people with different responsibilities.

As the studio grew, I learned that leadership is not about doing everything yourself. It is about building the right team, defining responsibilities clearly and protecting the central idea while allowing specialists to do what they do best.

I also believe strongly in long-term reputation. A beautiful project may attract attention, but professionalism determines whether clients, consultants and partners want to work with you again.

For me, the strongest business model is one in which creativity and structure reinforce rather than fight each other.

I believe design contributes to society first through the quality of the environments we create.

Interior design is particularly intimate because people physically inhabit our work. Planning influences movement and interaction; light affects mood; acoustics influence stress; healthcare environments can increase anxiety or help reduce it.

This makes design a form of responsibility. We should think beyond aesthetics and consider longevity, comfort, intelligent use of resources and the emotional consequences of our decisions.

I am particularly interested in how design can improve healthcare, wellness and public environments because these are places where spatial experience can have a very direct effect on people.

I do not believe every socially meaningful contribution needs to be presented as philanthropy. Sometimes professional responsibility itself is a form of service: creating environments that genuinely make people’s lives better.

My experience with A’ Design Award has been meaningful because it gave INCLINE an opportunity to be evaluated outside the context in which it was originally created.

Receiving the Silver A’ Design Award for the INCLINE modular seating system became an important milestone in the development of my product design practice. My professional background is primarily in interior architecture and interior design, so seeing a furniture concept recognized independently strengthened my decision to develop product design as a serious parallel direction.

I value awards when they create more than a title. Meaningful recognition can provide independent professional evaluation, international visibility, new conversations and opportunities for a design to reach audiences far beyond its original context.

For me, an award should not become the reason for creating. It should become evidence of the journey — a marker that encourages you to continue developing the work further.

There is an internal feeling that this is simply what I am supposed to do.

Creativity has followed me since childhood through drawing, music, dance, theatre and art. Even when I briefly tried to move toward medicine, that creative instinct never disappeared. Eventually, I stopped trying to rationalize it and listened to it.

What continues to motivate me is the act of creation itself.

A project begins with almost nothing: a thought, a problem, a feeling, perhaps only an image that exists in your mind. Then, through imagination, discipline and the work of many people, something intangible becomes physical.

And eventually that creation becomes part of somebody else’s life. People live there, work there, recover there, meet, celebrate and create memories there.

After more than seventeen years, that transformation still fascinates me.

Design is no longer simply what I do professionally. It has become one of the ways through which I understand and participate in the world.

I chose it — but only after first preparing to choose something completely different.

Medicine seemed like the logical direction for several years. Then I reached a point where I understood that continuing simply because a path was already prepared for me would be a greater mistake than changing it.

Choosing design became one of my earliest lessons in trusting myself.

Interestingly, that decision has repeated itself in different forms throughout my life: entering unfamiliar markets, changing countries, rebuilding professional networks and repeatedly choosing possibility over comfort.

Sometimes the sensible path and the right path are not the same thing.

My practice is intentionally multidisciplinary. AB Design Buro works across luxury residential interiors, hospitality, restaurants and cafés, bars, healthcare and aesthetic medicine, beauty and wellness, offices, commercial and retail environments, as well as furniture and product design.

Personally, I have a particular love for public and commercial spaces.

A restaurant, hotel, clinic or beauty space can communicate with thousands of people the designer will never personally meet. I enjoy understanding what those people should feel and then using planning, scale, light, material and detail to create that emotional condition.

In residential design, I am especially attracted to large-scale villas and private residences, where architecture, interior, exterior spaces, landscape, art and furniture can be developed as one complete environment.

I also want product design to become an increasingly independent part of my practice. I am interested in developing new furniture collections, tableware and objects alongside interiors.

The common denominator is scale of thought: I like projects that give an idea enough room to become a world of its own.

I am not sure anyone should begin by trying to become a “legend.” I would begin by trying to become genuinely good.

Work. Learn. Look. Travel whenever possible. Study architecture, interiors, art, fashion, cinema, psychology, materials and human behavior. Develop technical knowledge and understand how things are actually built.

Most importantly, do things before you feel completely ready.

Make decisions. Make mistakes. Correct them. Try again.

Young designers sometimes spend too much energy protecting themselves from failure, but mistakes are part of professional education. With experience, unnecessary mistakes become fewer and good decisions become faster.

Recognition may come later. Professional depth has to come first.

Do not chase the title. Build the substance that could eventually deserve it.

Once, while visiting Paris for only a few days, I noticed an older man walking past me. His face seemed strangely familiar, and for a second I stopped.

Then I realized it was Jean Nouvel.

I literally ran after him because I wanted to meet him and take a photograph. I remember having goosebumps. For hours afterwards — perhaps even for several days — I kept thinking about that completely accidental encounter.

That experience explains the difference to me better than a theoretical definition.

A good designer creates excellent work. A truly great designer eventually becomes part of the cultural memory of the profession.

Greatness cannot be created by one successful project. It is accumulated through decades of ideas, risks and work that repeatedly prove their relevance.

The same is true of objects. Some pieces conceived almost a century ago remain desirable today. They are reissued, reinterpreted and endlessly referenced, yet the original idea still feels powerful.

Good design can define a moment. Great design survives its own era.

Exceptional design has several lives.

First, it has to work in the present: functionally, emotionally and aesthetically. It should respond intelligently to its context and to the people who use it.

But the strongest design also survives beyond the circumstances that created it. Technology changes. Fashion changes. Materials change. Society changes. Yet the central idea continues to make sense.

When I evaluate design professionally, I look at function, proportion, context, originality, execution, longevity and the relationship between the concept and the final result.

But I also trust the first human response.

Good design is often felt before it is understood.

When a space is truly coherent, the body often recognizes it before the analytical mind has identified the reasons.

For me, the strongest design is where function, emotion and idea become almost impossible to separate.

We often speak about design as if it were something added to life. I think that is backwards.

Design is part of the mechanism through which we experience life.

Space can influence whether we feel safe or exposed, calm or stimulated, welcome or intimidated. It affects how we move, where we look, how long we stay and how we interact with other people.

This makes design a psychological and strategic instrument as much as an aesthetic one.

The same principle applies to business. Some of the world’s most transformative companies understood that people do not experience a product only through technical function. They experience form, interface, environment, packaging and an entire visual language.

Apple is perhaps one of the clearest examples: design was not decoration applied to technology; it became part of how people understood and desired the technology.

In hospitality, retail, healthcare or residential design, the scale is different but the principle remains.

Design changes perception, and perception influences behavior.

That is an enormous amount of value for something still too often dismissed as aesthetics.

I would love to create a large-scale multidisciplinary cultural destination — perhaps a multi-level public space where architecture, contemporary art, installations, theatre, education, gastronomy and social life exist within one coherent concept.

I imagine large installations moving through several floors, galleries next to restaurants, performance spaces, lecture halls, interactive environments and unexpected transitions between them.

I would want people to arrive without a rigid plan and remain there for an entire day, moving between completely different experiences: learning, eating, watching, listening, discovering, meeting people and simply enjoying beauty.

The challenge would be to make something highly complex feel conceptually clear.

It would not simply be a building containing many functions. The building itself would become an experience connecting them.

Beyond a particular building type, I dream about a project where I could develop the complete creative universe.

Architecture and interior, furniture and lighting, tableware and objects, art, graphics, scent, sound and perhaps even the way people move through the experience — all developed from one central idea.

Interior designers usually enter a project within a framework created by many other decisions. I am fascinated by the opposite possibility: beginning with the philosophy and allowing it to travel consistently through every scale.

It could become a hotel, cultural destination or hospitality concept. The exact typology matters less to me than the opportunity for total authorship without losing collaboration.

I would love to create a place where even the smallest object feels related to the architecture because everything belongs to the same story.

I think I have to believe in the idea before I can ask anybody else to believe in it.

When I genuinely understand why a concept matters, I can communicate that conviction to the client, team, engineers and contractors. People feel when enthusiasm is real.

That does not mean falling blindly in love with every first idea. Ideas have to survive criticism, technical reality and sometimes complete reconstruction.

But once I believe we have found the right direction, I become very persistent about protecting its essence.

So perhaps my ingredients are conviction, stamina and the ability to make other people see something before it exists.

Design is collaborative. A vision that exists only inside the designer’s head is not yet useful. You have to bring other people into it.

I am attracted to designers who have the courage to create their own visual language rather than simply execute the language of the moment.

Kelly Wearstler inspires me through her fearlessness with color, material, scale and composition. Her interiors can be elegant and luxurious while still containing something unexpected or almost rebellious.

Harry Nuriev and Crosby Studios interest me for a different reason: conceptual boldness, irony and the ability to transform familiar objects and cultural references into something provocative and contemporary. I admire that kind of courage.

And I love Dimore Studio for complexity and atmosphere. Their work feels layered, cinematic and emotionally dense. Spaces seem to contain memory rather than simply furniture.

What connects these very different practices is not style. It is authorship.

I am inspired by people whose work could not easily have been created by somebody else.

I am particularly attracted to objects that remain recognizable and relevant long after the moment in which they were created.

The LC4 Chaise Longue by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand is a perfect example. Nearly a century after its conception, it can still enter a contemporary interior without feeling historical. New materials and finishes change its personality without weakening the original idea.

I also love designs where the concept is almost more powerful than the object itself: Davide Groppi’s Nulla, where the fixture practically disappears and light becomes the protagonist; Antoniolupi’s Silenzio, which transforms a sink into an architectural void; and Rosenthal’s Fast vases, where traditional porcelain appears caught in motion.

These objects are very different, but they share something important:

they take an ordinary typology and make us look at it again.

For me, that is one of the most exciting things design can do.

I hope my greatest project does not exist yet.

I would be uncomfortable believing that the best work of my career is already behind me.

There are, however, several projects that represent important stages of my development.

One is a large healthcare project in Dubai of approximately 2,000 square meters that evolved over four years into an extensive reconstruction. It required us to reconcile creative ambition with complex medical, technical and operational requirements.

Another is a beauty project at Dubai Mall, where design had to operate inside one of the world’s most visible and commercially demanding environments.

And in Thailand, working on public spaces within a major residential development gave us the opportunity to explore the relationship between architecture, nature and communal experience at a completely different scale.

I value these projects not because they look alike — they do not — but because each required me to become a slightly different designer.

The projects I value most are usually the ones that expand my professional vocabulary.

Professional growth works very much like physical training: if the load never increases, the muscle eventually stops developing.

I deliberately try to take on problems that require something I have not yet mastered — a new market, a different typology, a larger scale, unfamiliar technology or another level of responsibility.

I continue to travel, study, look at art and architecture, follow contemporary culture and expose myself to work that challenges my own preferences.

But I also think designers should stop pretending that creativity is an endless resource.

There are periods of extraordinary energy and periods of exhaustion. Burnout, doubt and temporary loss of interest can happen in a long creative career. I no longer consider that a catastrophe.

Sometimes growth requires increasing the load. Sometimes it requires recovery.

The important thing is to return curious.

I try to keep moving toward problems that make the current version of me slightly uncomfortable. That is usually where the next version begins.

Probably something involving controlled danger.

I might have become a serious diver or tried to master skydiving.

Apparently, even outside design I would still need some combination of freedom, concentration, curiosity and adrenaline.

So perhaps choosing interior design was the safer option.

For me, design is the disciplined transformation of an intangible idea into physical reality.

It begins with something that cannot yet be touched — a need, emotion, problem or vision — and gradually gives it form.

Creativity is only one half of that process. The other half is organization, responsibility, decision-making and execution.

That is why I have never seen the designer as simply an artist.

A designer has to combine opposite qualities: imagination and discipline, intuition and strategy, freedom and responsibility.

Creativity gives an idea its soul. Discipline gives it a chance to exist.

First of all, I am grateful to God.

I believe that whatever abilities, intuition and courage I have were given to me, and I am deeply grateful for the way He has guided me through my life.

I am also grateful to my parents. Even when their original vision of my future differed from mine, they supported my choices and allowed me to find my own direction.

But there is one person I remember with particular tenderness: my late aunt.

During my student years and the beginning of my professional life, she was one of my greatest supporters. I still remember the two of us carrying my application documents to the Academy of Arts. She was there at the very beginning — helping me, believing in me and always making me feel that she was proud of what I was becoming.

She is no longer here, but that kind of support does not disappear when a person does.

Some people continue walking beside you through the confidence they once gave you.

I love her very much, and I still miss her.

Attempts. Probably far more attempts than successes.

I think people underestimate how much professional growth comes from repeatedly trying, failing, correcting and trying again.

Talent matters. Education matters. Opportunity matters. But none of them replaces persistence.

One principle has followed me throughout my career: when something frightens me because it feels difficult, unfamiliar or slightly beyond my current level, I try not to automatically move away from it.

New countries, unfamiliar markets, larger projects and new areas of design have repeatedly forced me to grow before I felt completely ready.

I do not think courage means having no fear. Professionally, courage means deciding that fear does not get the final vote.

The number of attempts changes you. Eventually, some things that once required courage simply become experience.

One of the greatest challenges of my career has been rebuilding professional momentum in new countries and markets.

I developed my practice first in Belarus, later expanded significantly into the Middle East, and then entered the United States. Every transition required learning a new professional language: different clients, cultural expectations, regulations, construction practices, business environments and networks.

Moving internationally teaches you something humbling: experience travels with you, but reputation does not always travel at the same speed.

In a new market, you may have years of expertise behind you and still need to demonstrate your value again to people who have never heard your name.

At first, I saw that as an obstacle. Today, I see it differently.

Each new environment removed some of my professional comfort and forced me to become more adaptable, observant and ambitious.

Starting again does not mean starting from zero. You carry every lesson, mistake, skill and instinct from the previous chapter with you.

Many brilliant designers are quiet artists. They believe the work should speak entirely for itself. I understand that instinct, but over time I have learned that professional modesty can become professional invisibility.

Designers should not be afraid to communicate.

Publish your work. Enter respected competitions. Participate in exhibitions. Speak at professional events. Work with media. Explain your process, your challenges, your decisions and the thinking behind the final image.

This is not about turning creativity into constant self-promotion. It is about giving your work the opportunity to travel beyond the people who already know you.

I have also learned through working across different cultures that individuality should not be something a designer tries to neutralize in order to be accepted.

Your identity and point of view are usually among the most valuable things you have to communicate.

A beautiful project may attract attention. Understanding the mind behind it creates a relationship.

I do not know exactly what my next project will be, and I actually like that uncertainty.

My practice continues to expand across interiors and product design, and I want to remain open to projects that I cannot predict today.

But if I could send one very specific request into the universe, I would love to design a restaurant at the top of a skyscraper in Manhattan.

New York has an extraordinary relationship with density, architecture, light and verticality. Creating a hospitality experience high above the city, where the skyline becomes an active part of the interior rather than simply a view, would be an incredible challenge.

So perhaps this answer is also an invitation.

My ultimate goal is longevity.

I would like to create at least one thing — a space, an object, perhaps a collection — that people continue to value decades after I am gone.

The architects and designers I admire most, such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Zaha Hadid, achieved something extraordinary: their work outlived the circumstances in which it was created and became part of cultural memory.

I do not think legacy can be manufactured intentionally. You can only continue working, developing and trying to create something honest enough and strong enough to deserve a longer life.

If even a small part of my work eventually achieved that relevance, I would consider it an extraordinary privilege.

Awards recognize what you have done today. Longevity reveals whether it mattered.

Recognition creates expectation — and I think that is healthy.

Once people know your work, they expect the next project to reveal another level of thinking. Not necessarily something bigger, more expensive or more visually dramatic, but something more mature.

Past success should never become permission to repeat yourself.

I think people also expect an established designer to have a point of view: to make decisions with conviction, to understand responsibility and to contribute something beyond a collection of attractive images.

Experience should make the work deeper, not safer.

The dangerous moment in a creative career is when your reputation becomes more ambitious than your work.

I never want to reach that point.

Design shapes the conditions in which everyday life happens.

Planning influences how people move and meet. Light affects mood and attention. Acoustics influence stress. Materials affect comfort and perception. Public spaces can encourage interaction or isolation. Healthcare environments can increase anxiety or help reduce it.

None of these decisions determines who a person becomes, but together they can make certain experiences, behaviors and emotional states easier or more difficult.

This is why I believe design carries social responsibility.

The environments we create should support human life rather than merely photograph well.

We cannot design better people. But we can design better conditions for people to live, meet, work, recover, learn and think.

To me, that is already an enormous contribution.

One project I am particularly excited about is the reconstruction of a large colonial-style villa in Miami.

The challenge is to transform it into a highly contemporary, art-driven residence while preserving the authenticity and architectural character of the original house.

This is exactly the kind of tension I enjoy: different periods, visual languages and ideas existing together rather than one erasing the other.

I do not believe renovation should always mean making an old building look new. Sometimes history should remain visible. Contemporary interventions can then be confident enough to create contrast without pretending that the past never existed.

This project connects directly to my love of eclecticism.

Timelessness does not necessarily come from choosing one timeless style. Sometimes it comes from allowing different eras to have an intelligent conversation.

Interestingly, I do not have a long list of things I want the design industry to stop doing.

I would rather see it continue expanding what is possible.

I want creative people to have access to better technologies, materials, manufacturing methods and tools that reduce the distance between imagination and realization.

Design has no obvious finish line because the conditions around it never stop changing. Artificial intelligence is already transforming creative processes. New fabrication and construction technologies continue changing what can physically exist. In the future, entirely new environments — perhaps even human settlements beyond Earth — may create design problems we cannot yet properly imagine.

What I hope we protect throughout that acceleration is creative freedom and human authorship.

I would not make design smaller by prescribing where it should go. I would like the boundaries of what designers are able to imagine — and realize — to become larger.

I think we are entering a period in which extraordinary creative tools will become increasingly accessible.

Artificial intelligence, visualization, automation and advanced production technologies will allow more people to generate images, concepts and objects faster than ever before.

Paradoxically, I believe this will make human judgment and originality more valuable, not less.

When technical execution becomes easier, the important questions move upstream: Why this idea? Why now? Why does it matter? What cultural or human insight sits behind it?

The future designer may spend less time performing repetitive production tasks and more time acting as a curator, strategist, editor and author of meaning.

Tools will continue to become more powerful and more democratic.

When everyone has access to extraordinary tools, the real luxury will be having something original to say.

I start with questions, not images.

I want to understand the client, the purpose of the space, the business if it is commercial, the people who will use it, the architecture and every meaningful constraint.

What problem are we actually solving? What should happen here? How should people move? What should they feel? What cannot be changed?

Only when that framework becomes clear do I begin looking for the design answer.

I believe creativity becomes more precise when the problem is understood precisely.

The better you understand the question, the less random the answer becomes.

Stay hungry enough to keep learning and brave enough to keep changing.

I never want experience to become an excuse for repetition.

I want to continue training my eye, discovering new cultures and technologies, entering unfamiliar markets, experimenting with new typologies and setting goals that require another level from me.

Experience should give you confidence, but it should never make you too comfortable.

The moment you become completely satisfied with what you already know, growth begins to slow down.

I think this question is a little like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Design introduces an idea. If enough people respond to it, the idea becomes a trend. The trend then influences other designers, who reinterpret it, exaggerate it, commercialize it, reject it or deliberately move in the opposite direction.

That reaction eventually creates another idea, and the cycle begins again.

So I do not see the relationship as a straight line. It is more like a spiral.

Trends are useful because they reveal what a particular moment in culture is interested in. But I would never want them to become instructions.

Design creates trends, trends push design, and eventually somebody becomes bored enough to disrupt the cycle again.

Technology continuously moves the border between impossible and buildable.

Architecture and design have always evolved alongside developments in engineering, materials, manufacturing and construction. Forms, scales and systems that would once have been technically impossible gradually become achievable and, eventually, ordinary.

Artificial intelligence is simply the newest acceleration of that process. It is already becoming part of creative and professional workflows — particularly in research, exploration, visualization, communication and the automation of repetitive tasks.

What interests me is not technology for its own sake. I am interested in what happens when technology gives creative professionals more time and more possibility.

If machines can absorb more routine work, the designer can devote more attention to the things that are much harder to automate: judgment, cultural understanding, intuition, taste, empathy and the quality of the original idea.

Technology should expand imagination, not replace intention.

Technology expands what we can do. It does not decide what is worth doing.

I believe color, materials, light and atmosphere are not decorative layers applied to architecture. They are psychological instruments.

We do not experience space only with our eyes. We experience it with the entire body. Before we consciously analyze an interior, we have already registered its scale, proportion, light, texture, temperature, acoustics and rhythm — and we have already begun responding emotionally.

This is why I often say that design is not neutral.

Light can activate or calm, direct attention, create intimacy and completely change the perception of the same material.

Materials communicate both physically and through association. Stone can suggest permanence and stability; wood introduces warmth and a connection to nature; textiles bring softness and tactility; reflective surfaces can create expansion, energy or tension.

I approach color in a similar way. I rarely ask only whether a color is beautiful. I ask what it is doing.

Should this environment stimulate or slow a person down? Should it create appetite, intimacy, confidence, trust, concentration or calm?

Then there is ambience, which is what happens when all these decisions begin working together. A successful atmosphere is rarely created by one expensive material or spectacular object. It emerges from the relationship between light, sound, proportion, circulation, texture, color and even the empty space between things.

Different typologies therefore require completely different emotional strategies.

In a medical or aesthetic clinic, I may ask how the environment can reduce anxiety and communicate safety and care before the patient has even spoken to a doctor.

In a restaurant, the questions change: should the atmosphere create energy or intimacy? Encourage people to stay or create a faster rhythm? How should lighting, acoustics and seating influence social interaction and the perception of the food?

In a private residence, the objective may be restoration, identity and emotional safety.

This is why I increasingly think of interior design as emotional architecture. We are not simply arranging beautiful materials. We are constructing conditions for human experience.

And that creates an ethical responsibility. If we understand that environments influence perception and behavior, we should use that knowledge consciously.

Sometimes the correct decision is stimulation. Sometimes it is silence. Sometimes the most powerful design gesture is removing something and allowing the person room to breathe.

People may forget the exact color of the walls, but they rarely forget how a space made them feel.

For me, that is ultimately the role of color, materials and ambience: to transform physical space into emotional experience.

I wish people asked “why?” more often.

Not only: What material is this? What color is that? Who made this chair?

I would rather hear: Why did you organize the space this way? Why is the light concentrated here? What should a person feel at this moment? What problem was this decision solving? Why was this material necessary for the idea?

I am deeply interested in the psychology behind interiors. For me, design is not the process of assembling beautiful things that happen to match.

Every meaningful decision should have an intention behind it.

I would love conversations about design to move more often from “What did you use?” to “What did you intend?”

Because the thinking behind a decision is usually much more interesting than its finish code.

My first reaction is admiration. My second is curiosity about the person who created it.

When I encounter truly exceptional work, I often think: What kind of mind sees the world this way?

I become curious about the designer’s life, education, childhood, cultural background, obsessions, mistakes and experiences. What did this person see or live through that allowed them to arrive at an idea I would never have reached in exactly the same way?

Great work makes me want to meet its author.

Not to ask where something came from, but to understand how their mind connects things.

I do not experience exceptional work as a threat. It energizes me. Seeing another person push the profession further reminds me how much territory is still unexplored.

Great design does not make me want to copy the answer. It makes me want to understand the mind that asked the question.

Absolutely. I believe deeply in collaboration — but not in collaboration where everybody tries to become the same person.

My ideal partner is someone whose strengths complement mine.

The best partnership works like a puzzle: I should be strongest where you are weaker, and you should be strongest where I am weaker.

I love people who genuinely care about the result — people who bring ideas without waiting to be asked, take initiative and want the project to become exceptional rather than simply finished.

I am not interested in internal competition for authorship. The most interesting creative people compete primarily with their own previous level.

At the same time, passion without execution is not enough. I value people who are imaginative and intellectually alive, but also structured, responsive and capable of turning thought into result.

Creativity should generate possibilities. Professionalism should make them happen.

My ideal team is made of people who care deeply, think independently and deliver reliably.

One of the encounters I remember most happened in Dubai, where I attended a talk and masterclass by Karim Rashid.

Afterwards, I approached him to introduce myself and thank him for the presentation. During our conversation, he asked where I was from and what I was planning next.

I told him that I was preparing to move to the United States.

He said that he lived in New York and, in an incredibly simple and friendly way, told me something like: “You should definitely live in New York for a while. I think you will love it.”

What stayed with me was how natural the advice felt. Here was a globally recognized designer whose work I had known for years, speaking to me for a moment almost as if he were an old friend giving me a personal recommendation.

I remembered it.

After moving to the United States and initially basing myself in Miami, I decided to follow his advice. I began spending significant time in New York and eventually lived between Miami and New York for almost a year.

And he was absolutely right.

I have travelled extensively and lived and worked in very different places, but New York has an energy I have never experienced anywhere else in quite the same way. It is intense, demanding, culturally dense, contradictory, restless and extraordinarily alive.

For a creative person, it is almost impossible to remain visually asleep there.

What I value about that encounter is not simply that I met a famous designer. It is the realization that sometimes one casual sentence from somebody whose creative journey you respect can quietly influence a real decision in your own life.

His advice did exactly that.

And I am genuinely grateful that I listened.

Interestingly, the books that influence my design are not necessarily books about design.

I read about creativity, psychology, spirituality, religion and people’s lives because anything that changes the way I understand human beings can eventually change the way I design for them.

I believe inspiration rarely respects professional categories.

I remember once working on a restaurant while watching a very difficult historical film about war and persecution. There was a scene set in a dark underground environment that had absolutely nothing to do with interior design, yet something about its atmosphere stayed with me.

That emotional impression eventually contributed to an idea for a dark restaurant room with a chandelier positioned unusually low, almost lying across the table. The installation became the visual center of the room, and guests specifically requested tables there.

I find this fascinating because the original source and the final design had almost nothing literal in common.

The same happens with books. A sentence about faith, fear, human behavior or transformation can remain somewhere in the subconscious and return years later as a completely unexpected spatial idea.

I do not read only to collect references. I read to give my mind more things to connect.

Through practice, curiosity and progressively harder problems.

I started working professionally while I was still studying, so theory and real practice developed simultaneously from the beginning.

Since then, different countries, cultures, project typologies and scales have continually forced me to learn something new. Working on a residence, restaurant, medical clinic or piece of furniture requires completely different knowledge.

I deliberately try not to remain only in areas where I already know I am competent.

I believe professional growth begins when the problem becomes slightly larger than the version of you who first encounters it.

You struggle, research, ask questions, make mistakes, solve it — and afterwards your professional capacity has expanded.

Mastery, to me, is not reaching a point where everything becomes easy. It is becoming increasingly capable of dealing with things that are difficult.

If time and history disappeared as limitations, I would choose people from very different creative disciplines.

I would love to speak with Tom Ford about taste, discipline and his ability to move between fashion, film and business without losing authorship.

I would ask Madonna about reinvention — how someone can transform repeatedly over decades while remaining unmistakably themselves.

I would want to speak with Michael Jackson about creativity, sensitivity, perfectionism and what extraordinary talent demands from the person carrying it.

I would happily spend hours with Guy Ritchie discussing rhythm, storytelling, character and the construction of such recognizable cinematic worlds.

I am fascinated in general by multidisciplinary creative people — people such as Lenny Kravitz and Pharrell Williams, who refuse to remain inside one professional definition.

But if this question truly removes every limitation of time and space, my deepest answer is different.

I would want to speak with God.

I would ask about meaning. Why certain things happen. What we misunderstand about our own lives. How differently success and failure might look from a perspective larger than our own.

I suspect that conversation would change every other question I could ever ask.

I recently heard the opinion that a good designer does not need awards or external recognition because the work should be enough.

I fundamentally disagree.

Awards are not the reason to design, and they cannot turn weak work into strong work. But meaningful professional recognition can provide independent evaluation, introduce the work to new audiences, differentiate a designer in a competitive field and create opportunities for clients, exhibitions, media and collaboration.

It also provides something more personal: milestones.

I think about it similarly to sport. An athlete may first compete locally, then nationally, then internationally. No single medal defines the athlete, but over time the results document development, consistency and ambition.

Creative careers also need moments that tell you: this work reached somebody; this stage has been completed; now continue.

There are thousands of invisible hours behind the projects people eventually see. Recognition occasionally gives those efforts a visible marker.

The important thing is not to confuse recognition with identity.

Awards should become evidence of the journey, not the reason for taking it.

Color: White. For me, it represents clarity, light and possibility. It is a foundation from which almost anything can begin.

Place: I cannot choose only one. Milan, Miami, New York and Dubai are all cities where I feel strangely at home, each for completely different reasons.

Food: Italian cuisine, without hesitation.

Season: Warm spring, summer when it is not excessively hot, and early warm autumn. I am definitely not a winter person.

Thing: Sunglasses. I see them almost as small pieces of architecture for the face. They communicate taste, character and a little mystery. For me, they are not about hiding from the world; they are a way of expressing identity.

Fashion brand: Saint Laurent. I love its tension between elegance and boldness, femininity and masculinity, restraint and provocation.

In interior design, I have several long-standing favorites: Henge for its dramatic materiality, Rimadesio for precision and purity of line, and Minotti for its extraordinary command of contemporary upholstered furniture.

I am a very structured person. I genuinely enjoy clarity, order and the feeling that things are moving forward.

Every day, I write my important tasks by hand. I also keep weekly and monthly lists.

I have a slightly strange rule: if I do not complete an important task today, I physically rewrite it onto tomorrow’s list.

Of course, I use digital planning tools as well, but handwriting is intentional. Rewriting an unfinished task is inconvenient enough that it gives me one more reason to finish it today rather than meet it again tomorrow.

But a truly great day is not simply a day when every box is checked.

It is a day when something meaningful has moved forward. A difficult problem has been solved. The client is excited. Our decisions are helping construction rather than delaying it. My team is engaged. An idea that existed only in our minds yesterday has become slightly more real today.

Large projects do not always move quickly, and I have learned not to confuse speed with progress.

What motivates me is momentum — the feeling that something meaningful is becoming real, one decision at a time.

It was probably obvious that I would become a creative person. Whether interior design was already inevitable is another question.

But there is one childhood story that now seems almost suspiciously prophetic.

When I was about seven or eight years old, I won a children’s pavement drawing competition. The winners were invited to receive prizes, and I remember going into the mayor’s office to collect mine.

Apparently, they had run out of gifts intended for girls.

So instead, I received what was supposed to be a “boys’ gift”: an encyclopedia explaining how to build, repair and make things with your own hands.

And I loved it.

Looking back, I find the situation very funny. I had just won an art competition, and instead of receiving a conventional children’s gift, I was handed a manual about how things are constructed.

Perhaps somewhere between those two things — drawing something and wanting to understand how it could actually be made — the future interior designer was already there.

I still remember that encyclopedia with enormous affection.

I find this question almost impossible to answer — and that is exactly what makes the future so exciting.

The speed of technological development is already extraordinary. Artificial intelligence, medicine, engineering, energy and space exploration may transform human life so profoundly that even our most radical predictions today could look surprisingly naïve a thousand years from now.

If humanity chooses development over destruction, the possibilities are almost impossible to comprehend. We may inhabit environments beyond Earth, radically extend healthy human life and create forms of architecture, transportation and interaction that today belong to science fiction.

But technology alone does not guarantee a better future.

We still live in a world of wars, displacement and destruction. Talented people continue to leave places where they cannot safely or freely build their futures, taking their knowledge, creativity, businesses and potential elsewhere.

Having migrated myself and built parts of my professional life in different countries, I understand personally how much human potential can move when an environment stops allowing it to grow.

So my greatest hope for the next thousand years is not simply that humanity becomes more technologically advanced.

I hope we become equally advanced in what we choose to do with that power.

The future will depend not only on what humanity becomes capable of creating, but on whether we choose creation over destruction.

If we get that part right, I suspect the future will be far more extraordinary than anything we can imagine today.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned has very little to do with design.

My life has changed dramatically several times.

I built my professional career first in Belarus, later established a major part of my practice in the United Arab Emirates, and then began another chapter in the United States. At the same time, my work kept taking me across countries, cultures and continents.

I have travelled to around fifty countries, many of them repeatedly, and have had the opportunity not simply to visit different places but to experience different ways of living, thinking and creating.

These years have probably been the most intense period of my life — professionally and personally. There have been extraordinary successes, difficult moments, uncertainty, inspiration, disappointment and several completely new beginnings.

And with every year, one thing becomes clearer to me:

life moves incredibly fast.

We spend far too much time wondering what other people will think. Whether they will approve. Whether we look foolish. Whether we started too late. Whether somebody else is already further ahead.

Eventually, most of that becomes irrelevant.

What matters is having the courage to build a life that actually feels like your own.

Listen to yourself. Take risks worth taking. Change direction when you know something is no longer right. Work hard for what matters to you. Do not be ashamed of ambition. And do not wait for everybody to understand your choices before you make them.

If you think you are already late, begin anyway. Quite possibly, you may still arrive first.

Do what you can with the life you have, here and now.

Be brave enough to become yourself before time makes the decision for you.

AB Design Buro is an international interior architecture, interior and product design practice working across the United States, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Our work spans luxury residential interiors, hospitality, restaurants and cafés, healthcare and aesthetic clinics, beauty and wellness, commercial and retail environments, furniture and product design. Alena_Bulataya_Executive_CV_2026_LUXURY.pdf

I founded the practice after several years of working independently. As projects became more complex, it became obvious that serious design could no longer be the work of one person.

Today I see the studio almost as an orchestra. A project may involve architects, interior designers, engineers, technical designers, visualization specialists, project managers, estimators, contractors, suppliers and many other professionals. They speak different professional languages, but ultimately they must produce one coherent result.

My role as Founder and Art Director is to establish and protect the central idea while coordinating creativity with business reality.

I think this is something people sometimes misunderstand about our profession. A designer cannot be only an artist. A strong designer has to think like a creator, strategist, psychologist, manager and organizer at the same time.

Imagination starts the project. The ability to organize people and decisions is what allows that imagination to survive reality.

For me, design is the materialization of something that initially exists only as a feeling, idea or aspiration. It is the process of turning how we want to live, how we want to feel and, sometimes, who we want to become into something physical.

People often romanticize design as pure creativity. I see it differently. Great design exists at the intersection of two almost opposite forces: imagination and discipline.

Creativity generates the idea. But bringing that idea into reality requires responsibility, organization, persistence, technical understanding and an enormous amount of work.

Creativity gives design its soul. Discipline allows that soul to exist in the real world.

My practice is deliberately diverse: private residences and villas, hospitality, restaurants and cafés, healthcare, beauty and wellness, commercial interiors, furniture and product design.

Personally, however, I have a particular love for public and hospitality spaces.

They allow me to explore something I find fascinating: how an environment can influence people I may never personally meet.

Before anyone explains a concept, the space is already communicating. It can create excitement, intimacy, trust, curiosity, calm or surprise. A restaurant and a medical clinic may require almost opposite emotional responses, and understanding how to create those responses is one of the parts of design I enjoy most.

Public interiors also have an unusual honesty. Thousands of people physically experience the result. You cannot explain a bad space into becoming a good one.

A successful public space becomes one of the most convincing portfolios a designer can have. The project speaks before the designer does.

I honestly cannot name one favorite project. After more than seventeen years, there are many projects to which I remain emotionally attached.

But one early project marked an important turning point in my career: Brioche Bistro, a French bakery and bistro completed in Minsk in 2017.

Its visibility grew organically through design media and platforms such as Pinterest. Unexpectedly, international competition organizers began approaching me about the project.

Brioche subsequently received recognition across international programs including the ICONIC AWARDS: Innovative Architecture by the German Design Council, Restaurant & Bar Design Awards in the UK, WIN Awards / World Interiors News Awards, and Storie di Farina / Le 5 Stagioni in Italy, receiving winner, finalist, shortlist and honourable mention distinctions across these programs. Alena_Bulataya_Executive_CV_2026_LUXURY.pdf

What mattered to me was not simply collecting titles. It was the first time I saw a physical space develop a life completely independent of its address. People who had never visited Minsk knew the project through images. It brought international attention and new clients to my practice.

It taught me that a strong project does not necessarily remain where you build it. If the idea is strong enough, it can travel much further than you can.

My first independent commission was a small apartment for people connected to my family.

My first commercial interior was more memorable: a small Japanese kaiten sushi bar where sushi travelled through the restaurant on a conveyor belt. At that time, the concept was still unusual in our market. The clients travelled extensively in Asia and Japan and brought the idea home.

Looking back, I like that one of my earliest commercial projects already involved something that later became central to my international practice: understanding an idea from one cultural context and translating it into another rather than simply copying it.

I feel most creative when trust already exists.

When a client chooses me because they understand my work and trusts me as a professional, I can direct my energy toward solving the project rather than proving that I deserve to solve it.

The second condition is a strong team. When architects, engineers, contractors, consultants, designers and the client are all professional and understand their responsibilities, an enormous amount of creative energy is released.

I am actually most creative when there is order around creativity. When the process is structured and the technical reality is under control, my attention is free to move toward ideas.

For me, creative freedom is born from trust and structure. Chaos does not create freedom; it consumes the energy that could have been used for creativity.

Space planning is one of my favorite parts of the process. For me, a plan is never simply a technical diagram; much of the future concept is already born there.

Ergonomics comes first. I need to understand how people enter, move, stop, interact, what they see and how naturally the environment supports its purpose. Aesthetics can then be layered onto that foundation.

The second aspect that fascinates me is human perception. Especially in public interiors, I constantly ask: What should a person feel here?

A restaurant, bar, beauty salon and medical clinic require very different emotional responses. I enjoy solving that psychological puzzle and understanding how planning, proportions, light, materials, color, acoustics and objects can influence the result.

We design behavior and emotion as much as we design space.

Primarily, pleasure and curiosity.

After more than seventeen years in this profession, I have never regretted choosing it. Design has become so integrated into my life that I do not always distinguish clearly between observing the world as a person and observing it as a designer.

I can be walking through a city, watching a film or having dinner and suddenly notice a proportion, behavior, material or detail that solves something in my mind.

The profession can be exhausting, but the fundamental feeling has never disappeared: I genuinely enjoy creating something that did not exist before.

Seeing a project realized as I imagined it is one of the strongest emotions in my profession.

A project begins as something completely intangible — sometimes only a thought or feeling. Then hundreds of decisions and many people transform that thought into something physical that can finally be entered, touched and experienced.

There is an almost parental feeling in that moment: something you carried for a long time suddenly acquires a life independent of you.

And spatial design has another dimension. People will live there, work, recover, meet, celebrate, fall in love, make decisions and create memories there.

We begin with an idea, but ultimately we are designing a small part of somebody else’s life.

Successful design achieves what it was created to achieve.

It should answer the client’s needs, work functionally, be executed well and create the intended experience for the people who use it.

In a public space, success may be visible in the way people respond, return and interact with the environment. In a residence, success may be quieter: the owner simply feels completely at home and everyday life works better.

Good design should improve life in some functional or emotional way. Otherwise it risks becoming only an image.

Good design is felt before it is understood.

When I enter a truly successful space, there is often an immediate reaction: yes, this works. My analytical mind may not yet know why.

Afterwards I begin noticing the planning, proportions, light, materials, ergonomics and details that explain that first instinctive response.

The opposite happens as well. You enter somewhere and immediately feel uncomfortable; only afterwards do you identify the poor circulation, wrong scale, visual noise or inappropriate lighting responsible for it.

Professional evaluation obviously requires objective analysis. But after years in design, I have learned not to underestimate that first human response.

The best design creates coherence before the brain has had time to explain it.

Designers create environments in which other people’s lives take place. That makes our responsibility much larger than aesthetics.

Like architecture, sculpture and art, design communicates through form, matter, proportion and emotion. But interior design is particularly intimate because people physically inhabit the result.

We therefore have a responsibility to think about functionality, longevity, human comfort, intelligent use of resources and the emotional consequences of what we create.

I see creation as a privilege and, in some ways, a form of service.

A designer leaves traces in other people’s lives. Our responsibility is to make those traces worth leaving.

Design is evolving at extraordinary speed, and one of the most exciting developments is the increasing intersection of cultures.

Working and living internationally has allowed me to watch materials, traditions, aesthetics and ways of living travel between continents. Some of the most interesting contemporary design now emerges between cultures rather than entirely inside one of them.

Technology and artificial intelligence will accelerate this further.

I do not believe AI eliminates the need for designers. Its greatest potential is to remove part of the repetitive, administrative and operational work surrounding creativity, giving creative professionals more time for thinking, questioning and imagining.

Images will become easier to generate. Technical processes will become faster. And paradoxically, that will make original human thinking, taste, judgment and identity more valuable.

When everyone has access to powerful tools, the real luxury will be having something original to say.

One of my most recent exhibitions was REALM: Reflection of the Future in Manhattan, New York City, in May 2026, where a piece from my INCLINE modular furniture collection was presented. Alena_Bulataya_Executive_CV_2026_LUXURY.pdf

It was particularly meaningful because furniture and product design are becoming an increasingly important extension of my interior practice.

The next step I would like to realize is larger: presenting not an individual piece, but a complete series of new furniture and product collections internationally.

I am most inspired by changing context.

Travel matters to me not simply because I see new things, but because a new environment forces my perception to reset. New York makes me look differently than Miami; Dubai activates another visual language; Europe another.

I deliberately expose myself to these shifts.

Art exhibitions, architecture, fashion, cinema, restaurants, hotels, unfamiliar streets and ordinary human behavior all enter my visual memory. Film is particularly powerful because it combines space, light, color, fashion, psychology and storytelling simultaneously.

I do not consciously collect references to reproduce later. I prefer to absorb experiences and allow unexpected connections to happen.

For me, inspiration is less about finding beautiful images and more about keeping perception awake.

If I had to choose one word, it would probably be eclectic.

I enjoy mixing periods, cultures, materials, art and unexpected objects rather than following one stylistic formula.

I am not particularly interested in interiors where everything is perfectly correct and predictable. I like a certain degree of wrongness — something unexpected, disproportionate, ironic or provocative enough to give the space identity.

I want the eye to stop somewhere. I want a person to notice, question, smile or become curious.

That does not mean every project has to be visually loud. I also love restrained and elegant interiors. But even there, I usually search for one idea that breaks the perfection just enough to make the space memorable.

My approach is less about maintaining one recognizable visual signature and more about maintaining an attitude: elegance without boredom, freedom without chaos, and always a reason to feel something.

I am currently based in the United States, primarily between Miami and New York, while AB Design Buro continues to work internationally.

I was born and educated in Belarus. That European background gave me a strong foundation in composition, discipline and craftsmanship.

Years of working in the Middle East expanded my understanding of scale, luxury, hospitality and ambition.

The United States added another dimension: creative permission. I find the enormous diversity of lifestyles, identities and aesthetics here extremely stimulating. There is room for very different answers.

Moving between these environments has profoundly affected my work.

Belarus gave me discipline. The Middle East expanded my sense of scale. America gave me permission to experiment.

Today, mixing those cultural languages feels completely natural to me.

I begin by understanding what exists behind the brief.

A commercial interior is never simply a collection of rooms. Behind it is a business model, customer, positioning, operational system and ambition. Before designing, I want to understand those layers.

One particularly meaningful experience was developing design concepts for two signature restaurant formats for Swiss luxury watch brand Franck Muller for the Middle East market. The project remains protected by confidentiality agreements prior to realization, so I cannot discuss the design itself in detail. Alena_Bulataya_Executive_CV_2026_LUXURY.pdf

What made the experience fascinating was the challenge of translating an established brand’s DNA from one medium into another — from watchmaking and luxury into hospitality and spatial experience.

That is how I prefer to work with brands. The designer should not overwrite the brand’s identity. The designer should understand it deeply enough to give it another dimension.

Look beyond beautiful images.

Study the portfolio, but pay particular attention to realized projects. Look at experience, philosophy, communication and the way the designer thinks.

There is no designer who is perfect for every client, just as there is no client who is perfect for every designer.

The objective is not to find the abstract “best designer.” It is to find the right designer for that particular brand, problem and ambition.

And once you hire that person, allow professional

My process begins with listening, not drawing.

I need to understand what the client is actually trying to achieve — not only aesthetically, but functionally, emotionally and, in commercial projects, strategically. I study the business model, audience, operations and objectives alongside the architecture, engineering, regulations, budget, timing and physical constraints of the space.

Once that framework is clear, space planning comes first. I see the plan as the skeleton of the project: circulation, ergonomics, proportions and human behavior have to work before aesthetics are layered onto them.

Only then do we develop the visual and emotional language — materials, lighting, furniture, art, color and detail.

I need to understand the rules of the problem very clearly before I can begin breaking them intelligently.

Five designs that have remained in my personal visual vocabulary for years are:

Rosenthal — Fast vase collection. I love its sense of movement. Traditional porcelain appears almost physically distorted by speed. It is expressive, sculptural and slightly surreal.

Davide Groppi — Nulla. I am fascinated by lighting that creates a powerful effect while the fixture itself almost disappears. Nulla is essentially an absence that produces light. I particularly love this approach in hospitality and installations, where the atmosphere should be experienced before the source is noticed.

Antonio Lupi — Silenzio wall-recessed sink. It transforms an ordinary functional object into an architectural gesture. I have used it in projects several times and still find the idea beautifully futuristic.

Cassina — LC4 Chaise Longue by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand. Nearly a century after its conception, it still feels contemporary. New materials, colors and finishes can change its character without weakening the original idea. That is one of the clearest signs of timeless design.

Henge — Plynto side table by Ugo Cacciatori. I love the dialogue between natural stone and glass — two materially different elements composed almost as a small piece of architecture.

What connects these objects for me is that function is never their final destination. Each of them turns an ordinary typology into an idea.

My days are structured, but rarely identical.

I usually begin with a clear understanding of the priorities for the day and the week. That structure is important because my work involves many projects, people, countries and decisions simultaneously. Writing things down allows my mind to stop carrying everything at once.

A typical day includes communication with my team and clients, project development and decisions, but I have become increasingly protective of the parts of life that have nothing to do with work.

Sport is essential to me — gym, tennis, swimming. I love walking and try to walk every day. I follow exhibitions and cultural events wherever I am, and cinema is another major source of visual education for me: light, composition, fashion, architecture, storytelling and human behavior all meet there.

Travel is equally important. Changing environments resets my perception.

Over time, I have become less interested in simply managing time and more interested in managing attention. Wherever I am — in a project meeting, at the gym, walking through a city or having dinner with someone I love — I try to actually be there.

A designer’s life outside the studio eventually finds its way back into the studio.

My advice is not particularly romantic: work a lot, stay hungry and do not feel sorry for yourself.

Train your eye constantly. Study exceptional architecture and interiors, but do not stop there. Look at art, fashion, cinema, objects, materials, cultures and human behavior. Travel whenever you can. Visit exhibitions. Ask questions. Become interested in things outside your profession.

Most importantly, do things before you feel completely ready.

You will make mistakes. Good. Make them while moving. Every real mistake teaches something that theory cannot. With experience, unnecessary mistakes become fewer and good decisions become faster.

Talent matters, but consistency matters more than young designers sometimes want to hear.

Make more decisions. Make more mistakes. Learn faster. Keep moving.

One of the things I love most about design is that it is, in many ways, an ageless profession.

If you remain curious, time works in your favor. You accumulate references, technical knowledge, intuition, confidence and the courage to make decisions you might have been afraid to make earlier. A designer can become like good wine: the years should add complexity, not simply age.

It is also almost impossible to become intellectually bored. Every project introduces another person, business, culture, building or problem. The brain is permanently being asked to learn.

The difficulty is that the profession can become inseparable from life. An unresolved detail can follow you home. A solution can appear while you are having dinner. The mind does not necessarily recognize office hours.

I have had to learn that loving your profession does not mean allowing it to occupy every available part of you.

A career should enrich your life, not quietly replace it.

Never design for the sake of design.

Every project should answer a question, solve a problem or create a meaningful experience.

A material, an object, a dramatic gesture or an unusual form needs a reason to exist. That reason can be functional, emotional, strategic or conceptual — but there should be one.

A beautiful solution that does not answer the actual problem is still the wrong solution.

Design begins with a question. Its value lies in the quality of the answer.

A designer needs much more than taste.

Visual literacy is fundamental — the eye has to be trained continuously. But I would add curiosity, courage, persistence, discipline, empathy and an almost permanent creative hunger.

A designer has to be both imaginative and pragmatic. You need enough sensitivity to understand people, enough imagination to see something that does not yet exist, and enough discipline to bring it into reality.

You also need to think strategically and organize complexity. Interior design brings together clients, architects, engineers, contractors, suppliers, budgets, regulations, deadlines and hundreds of decisions. The designer cannot exist only in the romantic role of the artist.

In many ways, a designer is an orchestra in one person: part creator, part strategist, part psychologist, part manager and part problem-solver.

And perhaps the most important thing is never becoming intellectually full. A certain hunger is necessary.

I think of my professional toolbox in three parts.

The first is technology: the digital tools we use to design, visualize, communicate and increasingly artificial intelligence, which I use for research, exploration and accelerating certain processes.

The second is my physical and visual library. I collect design and art books, exceptional manufacturers’ catalogues, material references and objects. I follow a carefully selected group of international studios, brands and publications rather than consuming everything indiscriminately.

The third — and probably the most important — is real-world exposure. Travel, exhibitions, architecture, restaurants, hotels, art, fashion, cinema, unfamiliar cities and conversations with people from completely different cultures.

You cannot understand materiality entirely through a screen. You need to see scale, touch surfaces, notice how light behaves and watch how people actually use spaces.

My most important professional tool is still an educated eye attached to a curious mind.

Through structure and delegation.

The finished interior people eventually see is only the visible tip of an enormous process. Behind it are research, drawings, revisions, engineering, procurement, logistics, construction, communication and hundreds of problems that are solved without ever appearing in the final photograph.

I work with clear priorities and a team where responsibilities are distributed between specialists. I have also become much more disciplined about deciding what actually requires my attention and what does not.

Earlier in my career, I could mentally carry every unresolved project issue simultaneously. That is neither efficient nor healthy.

Today I try to give each problem its proper time rather than allowing every problem access to me at every moment.

The difficult professional skill is not only learning how to switch on. It is learning when to switch off.

There is no standard timeline.

Some projects take several months. Others become part of your life for years.

One of our recent healthcare projects in Dubai took approximately four years, evolving from a renovation into an extensive reconstruction and transformation of the building.

One of the longest residential projects of my career lasted almost nine years. The scale was substantial and there was no pressure from the client to rush the process.

At the other end of the spectrum, smaller projects can move from concept to realization within several months.

When circumstances allow it, I find approximately six months to a year a healthy timeframe for many interior projects: enough time to develop and execute properly, but not so long that the original energy disappears.

Every project has its own clock. The important thing is to respect reality without allowing momentum to die.

My most important professional experience has probably been learning how to begin again without actually beginning from zero.

I built my career first in Belarus, then expanded my practice into the Middle East, and later into the United States. Every new market removes some of the comfort you have accumulated. New culture, new clients, new regulations, new business environment, new professional network — suddenly reputation alone is not enough.

But you eventually understand that you are not truly starting from zero. You bring your eye, experience, mistakes, discipline, intuition and everything the previous market taught you.

Working internationally has also taught me that there is rarely one universally correct design answer. Culture changes the brief. Climate changes it. Lifestyle changes it. Business changes it.

Every new country makes you a beginner in some ways and a stronger professional in others.

I think repeatedly entering unfamiliar environments has kept me ambitious, curious and professionally alive.

My clients range from private individuals and entrepreneurs to established companies, business owners and developers across international markets.

Our work spans luxury residential, hospitality, restaurants, healthcare, aesthetic medicine, beauty, commercial development and product design. Some projects involve high-profile private clients and confidential commercial work, particularly in the Middle East, so discretion is an important part of our practice.

One collaboration I can discuss in general terms is the development of design concepts for two signature restaurant formats for Franck Muller, the Swiss luxury watch brand, for the Middle East market.

The project remains protected by confidentiality prior to realization, so I cannot publish the concepts or discuss the details yet. But working with a brand with such a distinctive heritage and international reputation was a great professional honor.

The fascinating challenge was to understand how the DNA of a luxury watchmaker could be translated into hospitality — from an object worn on the body into an environment experienced around the body.

That kind of translation between brand, culture and space is exactly the type of problem I enjoy.

The next chapter is about expansion without dilution.

I want to continue strengthening AB Design Buro in the United States while developing our international practice across the Middle East and Europe.

At the same time, I want product design to become a serious parallel direction rather than an occasional extension of interior projects.

INCLINE was an important step, but I am interested in developing a broader world of objects — new furniture collections, tableware and eventually other pieces that can exist independently from our interiors.

I see interior and product design as two complementary lines: the spaces we inhabit and the objects we touch inside them.

Ultimately, I want AB Design Buro to evolve beyond the definition of an interior design studio into a broader international creative practice with a recognizable point of view.

Absolutely. Complex design is a team sport.

AB Design Buro works with architects, interior designers, technical designers and draftspeople, project managers, estimators, 3D visualization specialists, engineers, contractors and external consultants depending on the project.

My strongest personal involvement remains in space planning, concept development, stylistic direction and the central idea of the project.

Over the years, I have deliberately learned to delegate work that other specialists can perform better than I can. I do not believe leadership means proving that you can do everything yourself.

I see the creative director much more like the conductor of an orchestra. You do not need to play every instrument. You need to understand the composition, recognize when something is out of tune and make sure many different professionals are still creating one coherent piece of work.

The goal of leadership is not control for its own sake. It is coherence.

One project I am particularly excited about is a new aesthetic and healthcare clinic on Madison Avenue in New York City.

The project explores how contemporary aesthetic medicine can move beyond the conventional visual language of healthcare.

We are developing an environment where advanced technology and medical functionality coexist with art, strong visual identity and a much more emotional approach to space.

Healthcare interiors interest me precisely because the psychology is so important. People may enter carrying anxiety, vulnerability or uncertainty. Design cannot solve the medical problem, but it can fundamentally change the emotional context in which that person experiences it.

And doing this on Madison Avenue, in Manhattan, makes the project particularly exciting. New York is visually sophisticated and unforgiving; a concept has to have a reason to exist there.

I am very much looking forward to seeing this one realized.

The best way to discover my work and contact our studio is through AB Design Buro at bulataya.com.

I can also be contacted directly at alena.bulataya.design@gmail.com.

AB Design Buro works internationally across the United States, Middle East, Europe and other markets.

Perhaps the most important thing I would add is not specifically about design. It is about having the courage to change direction.

My own life has required that more than once.

As a teenager, I studied chemistry and biology and was preparing for a possible future in medicine. At some point I understood very clearly that I was walking toward a life that was not mine, and I changed direction.

Years later, I had to make similar decisions on a much larger scale — moving between countries and continents, entering new professional markets and rebuilding parts of my career in environments where very little was guaranteed.

Each time, staying where I already was would have been easier.

Looking back, I am grateful that I was willing to risk comfort for possibility.

Not everything worked on the first attempt. Some things did not work on the second either. But I have learned not to confuse temporary failure with a final answer.

Work hard. Stay curious. Listen to yourself. Be willing to begin again. And when something matters enough, try one more time.

Sometimes the greatest risk is not changing your life. It is spending it becoming somebody you already know you do not want to be.