Breton: Brazilian furniture meets the mashrabiya

An international furniture presentation can do more than place existing pieces in a new market. Breton’s Downtown Design Dubai installation used a local architectural reference to change the context in which its work was seen.

WAYFARER’s November 2024 account described a collaboration with Lebanese designer Sawsan Chammas Haber, creative director of Dipiugi. The mashrabiya supplied the starting point for an installation built around interwoven timber and layered texture.

A frame rather than a borrowed identity

The reference to traditional Middle Eastern architecture gave the Brazilian furniture another setting. It did not require the objects to surrender their own forms or be described through an interchangeable international aesthetic.

Fernanda Marques’s Mantiqueira table was among the pieces highlighted in the source. Its lines referred to Brazilian mountain landscapes, allowing the installation to hold more than one geographical vocabulary.

The company already had a showroom in the region, according to the original report. Participation in the fair therefore formed part of a longer presence rather than a single isolated appearance.

Claims of being the only Brazilian participant are not repeated without verification, and the event is not presented as current. The more substantial record is the collaboration itself: an exhibition frame informed by one architectural tradition, containing objects shaped by another. Their relationship created the presentation’s point of view.

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Adapted from the WAYFARER Brazil archive, first published 2024-11-05. English adaptation: 6 October 2026. This is an archival account, not a report of a new visit. Exhibitions, collections and menu details are described in their original context, not as current availability.