Alfredo Javier Bataller Pineda

The art of living well: Luxury, design and the cities people choose

The session’s core message is that luxury housing is increasingly being valued not only for premium materials, location, or brand prestige, but for its ability to improve daily life: sleep, movement, emotional wellbeing, community connection, and potentially longevity. The moderator opened with a simple comparison between two identical homes, one merely acceptable and one enhanced by beautiful design and better living outcomes, then asked how much more people would pay for that added quality of life. This framed the panel around the premium people are willing to attach to wellness, beauty, longevity, and design, especially at the high end of the residential market where money may be less of a constraint. Claire German of Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour explained that luxury interiors are becoming more human-centric. With visibility across 700 brands and more than 160 showrooms, she described discerning clients as increasingly demanding provenance, narrative, and individuality. They want to know where pieces come from, how they are made, and often why they are made. For her, bespoke work is the gold standard of luxury interiors, whether a six-month hand-blocked fabric, a handcrafted games table, or hand-painted wallpaper. The point was that craftsmanship and artisan skill are not decorative extras; they are powering luxury by making homes feel emotionally meaningful and personal. Majdi Munif Treish shifted the conversation from interiors to community-scale development, using ICTReD’s Yas Canal as an example: 1,146 villas within a total of 9,000 units for more than 30,000 residents. He argued that large-scale projects must focus on the whole community, not just the appeal of individual residential units. He described balancing aesthetics with comfort, space with efficiency, and price with value, while following DMT guidelines and prioritising landscape, public realm, wayfinding, green space, parks, retail, F&B, marina-facing promenades, and waterfront access. His emphasis was on designing the full journey from the community entrance to each resident’s home. Alfredo Bataller then positioned SHA’s work with Imkan on Al Jurf as an attempt to create “the first healthy living island in the world,” combining residences with a wellness clinic, hydrotherapy, meditation areas, movement spaces, nutrition facilities, and organic farming ideas. He framed the project around repeated design questions: how residents can sleep better, energise in the morning, eat better, and raise children in a healthy living community. Finally, engineer Tareq Siam described Emirates Developments’ branded residence strategy, including Hilton, Elie Saab, Jumeirah, and a forthcoming Missoni project in Abu Dhabi. His key distinction was that a brand should not simply sit on a building; it must be authentic through team selection, design, materials, amenities, landscape, air quality, lighting, and resident experience.