This was our longest residency in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Not a stopover. Not a visit. Time enough to feel the ground shift.

We started in Dubai. The energy was sharp and fast. Streetwear had arrived in force for Sole DXB, and the city leaned into it. Brands landing hard. Limited drops. Installations running late into the night. Activations everywhere. Dubai knows how to host momentum.

The air smelled of heat and asphalt. Music bounced between buildings. You could feel culture being assembled in real time.

That was where we reconnected with friends who move comfortably between street and institution. Remi Rough, precise and disciplined in his work. Carlos Mare, color-heavy, rhythmic. Henry Chalfant, whose images defined how entire movements would be remembered. And David Fischer, who built Highsnobiety into a global lens on fashion, music, and youth culture.

Dubai felt loud, confident, immediate. The city thrives on presence.

Then the rhythm shifted.

In Abu Dhabi, things slowed and deepened. The energy continued, but it carried weight. We experienced our first projects there and spent time visiting construction sites that were shaping the future of cultural infrastructure in the region.

Standing inside the rising structure of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, still under construction, you could already feel it. Jean Nouvel’s dome filtering light like a woven sky. Sun breaking into geometry. Concrete holding silence. The building was designed to breathe before it was designed to speak.

Nearby, the Zayed National Museum, by Foster + Partners, was emerging as an idea made of steel and intention. Five towers shaped like falcon wings, built to channel wind and memory. It was not about spectacle. It was about legacy.

Walking those sites, dust on shoes, helmets on heads, you understood the scale of ambition. Abu Dhabi builds for permanence. For decades, not cycles.

Dubai gave us acceleration. Abu Dhabi gave us depth.

Together, that long stay in the GCC felt like witnessing culture under construction. Streetwear on the surface. Museums in the ground. Heat binding everything together.

Some places grow fast. Some grow carefully. In 2016, the Gulf did both at once.