The d3 Awards is a newly launched regional design award championing emerging talent from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Founded by Dubai Design District (d3), a global creative hub under TECOM Group PJSC, the d3 Awards are part of the district’s Beyond a Decade of Design celebrations in 2025. The Awards honour excellence and innovation in design and celebrate the MENA region’s evolving, vibrant and diverse design landscape. It recognises contributions in material exploration, human-centred design and forward-thinking design solutions.

The inaugural edition focused on architecture and invited architects and designers, including those specialising in interiors, landscapes, and spatial design, to partake. Following submissions from close to 90 emerging design talents from across the MENA region, Ohireme Uanzekin, a young, emerging Dubai-based architectural designer was revealed as the winner of inaugural d3 Awards. Uanzekin’s winning design, titled ‘Abora - The Urban Earthscape’ imagines a network of spaces set within the ground to make up a living terrain, demonstrating the importance and impact of inclusive, community-driven spatial design.

Four further submissions were shortlisted. These were:

  • KODA's ‘The Cocoon’ Indian-born collective's proposal is a maternity centre inspired by the nurturing properties of a cocoon, reflecting South Senegalese heritage and sustainable design.

  • Prerna Revankar & Sanjana Chavadi’s project ‘Enlivening the Sphere of Relics’ The UAE-based Indian designers reimagine Al Dhayah Fort in Ras Al Khaimah as a dialogue between past and present, transforming the space into a landscape that honours memory and craft.

  • Yousif Al-Waeli from Iraq with his ‘Eternal Lands' Reshaping the UNESCO Recognised Marshlands’ Through his proposal, Al-Waeli imagines a revival of southern Iraq’s marshlands through a culturally rooted, sustainable plan for village and housing development.

  • Jamal Hamsho from Syria with ‘Floating Community’ Hamsho’s project is a response to rising sea levels in Banraeaba, South Tarawa, and proposes a floating community that preserves social, cultural, and ecological continuity.

These designs, alongside the winning submission, were unveiled at the d3 Architecture Exhibition during Dubai Design Week 2025, offering visitors a chance to explore the diverse and forward-thinking visions shaping the future of design in the region.