A Summer in Full Color
Summer in Dubai isn’t usually associated with lingering.
It’s the season of quick walks between air-conditioned buildings, shorter afternoons outdoors and carefully planned escapes from the heat. Yet every so often, a space comes along that encourages you to slow down, look up and stay a little longer.
That’s exactly what ICD Brookfield Place has set out to create with Under the Sun, a large-scale installation by internationally acclaimed design duo Craig & Karl, transforming the venue’s soaring 31-metre-high Summer Garden atrium into an immersive celebration of colour, warmth and playfulness. On display from August through late September, the installation invites visitors to experience summer from an entirely different perspective.
At its centre is a radiant sun, surrounded by oversized inflatable flowers, beach balls and playful sculptural forms suspended throughout the atrium. It’s bold, optimistic and impossible to ignore, creating an environment that feels less like a traditional installation and more like stepping into a living illustration.
For anyone familiar with Craig & Karl’s work, that sense of optimism will feel instantly recognisable. Working between New York and London, the duo have built an international reputation for transforming everyday spaces through vibrant colour, graphic simplicity and playful visual language. Their portfolio includes collaborations with Apple, Nike, Adidas, Chanel, Google, The New Yorker and Variety, alongside major public art installations around the world.
As the artists themselves explain, the idea was to capture the “warmth, vibrancy and joy of summer,” distilling it into a single immersive environment that allows visitors to experience the season from within the expansive Summer Garden atrium.
It’s a simple idea, but one that feels particularly fitting in Dubai, where summer often reshapes the rhythm of the city. Rather than treating the season as something to escape, Under the Sun embraces it, transforming an indoor public space into an environment that feels playful, uplifting and surprisingly transportive.
The installation also reflects ICD Brookfield Place’s continued commitment to placing creativity at the heart of everyday experiences. More than a business destination in the heart of DIFC, it has steadily established itself as one of Dubai’s most engaging cultural hubs, bringing together art, design, fashion, music, wellness and community programmingthroughout the year. Under the Sun continues that vision, reinforcing the idea that creativity doesn’t belong only inside galleries or museums. Sometimes it lives in the places we pass through every day.
Perhaps that’s what makes installations like this so memorable. They ask nothing of us except to pause for a moment, look up, smile and experience a familiar space through a different lens.
Under the Sun will be on display at the Summer Garden, Level 1, ICD Brookfield Place, from August through late September, offering visitors another reason to discover one of Dubai’s most dynamic cultural destinations.
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