In the climate-controlled atrium of Dubai's ICD Brookfield Place, artists Craig & Karl have suspended a summer that defies both season and geography — an overhead garden of inflatable flowers, beach balls, and a radiant sun that asks passersby to pause, look upward, and remember what uncomplicated joy feels like. Their installation, 'Under the Sun,' belongs to a long tradition of art that refuses to let architecture remain neutral, insisting instead that shared space can carry warmth, whimsy, and a kind of collective permission to delight. The work is a reminder that the most overlooked dimens
Craig & Karl's Inflatable Pool Party Transforms Dubai Atrium Into Summer Wonderland
They make you look up. They make you smile.
Mark
Why inflatables? Why not paint, or sculpture, or something more permanent?
Mimi
Inflatables have this quality of friendliness built into them. They're soft, they're approachable, they don't demand anything from you except to notice them. And there's something about the material itself—it's humble, it's playful, it's the opposite of precious. That matters when you're trying to activate a space that people usually ignore.
Mark
The artists are separated by an ocean. How does that actually work creatively?
Mimi
They've built a language together over years. They can throw an idea back and forth and know what the other person is reaching for without having to explain it. It's like they're thinking in the same dialect. The distance doesn't break that—if anything, it forces them to be clearer about what they're trying to do.
Mark
What's the point of bringing summer indoors in Dubai, a place that's already hot?
Mimi
It's not really about temperature. It's about the feeling of summer—the lightness, the color, the sense that you're allowed to play. Dubai's heat is relentless and functional. This is summer as joy, as a moment you can step into and experience together with other people.
Mark
Do you think people actually look up when they walk through that atrium?
Mimi
Some do immediately. Some walk past it three times before they notice. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. That's the whole point. The building was always there. The inflatables just give you permission to actually look at it.
Le Pouls
- A vaulted atrium in Dubai — typically a corridor of purposeful transit — has been seized by color, air, and the suspended logic of summer.
- The tension is quiet but real: can inflatable art, often dismissed as decorative novelty, genuinely transform how people inhabit and feel inside a building?
- Craig & Karl answer by making the architecture complicit — the ceiling becomes a canvas, the light becomes a collaborator, and the inflatables gain gravity from the specific space they occupy.
- Their 'Mateys' universe continues to expand, placing expressive inflatable characters in unexpected architectural contexts to interrupt routine and provoke upward glances.
- The installation is landing as both spectacle and invitation — a room that asks nothing of you except that you step inside and let yourself feel the season.
In the climate-controlled atrium of Dubai's ICD Brookfield Place, artists Craig & Karl have suspended a summer that defies both season and geography — an overhead garden of inflatable flowers, beach balls, and a radiant sun that asks passersby to pause, look upward, and remember what uncomplicated joy feels like. Their installation, 'Under the Sun,' belongs to a long tradition of art that refuses to let architecture remain neutral, insisting instead that shared space can carry warmth, whimsy, and a kind of collective permission to delight. The work is a reminder that the most overlooked dimension of any building is often the one directly above us.
Walk into the atrium at ICD Brookfield Place in Dubai and summer is waiting overhead. Craig & Karl's 'Under the Sun' fills the vaulted space with suspended inflatables — flowers in impossible colors, beach balls caught mid-flight, coiled inner tubes, and a presiding sun that seems to radiate actual warmth. The goal, as the artists describe it, was not to depict summer but to bottle its sensation and release it inside a room that most people cross without looking up.
The installation belongs to the duo's growing 'Mateys' universe, a collection of inflatable characters that have appeared on bridges, in galleries, and now dangling from a Dubai ceiling. What unites these appearances is a consistent ambition: to interrupt the neutral relationship between a person and a building, to give architecture personality — even mischief.
Craig and Karl met in college and spent years working in close physical proximity, the kind of sustained collaboration that either fractures a creative partnership or makes it permanent. Theirs became permanent. Working now from New York and London respectively, they maintain a process built on iterative exchange — one proposes, the other builds, and both trust a shared instinct for when something has found its form.
What distinguishes 'Under the Sun' is how deliberately it uses the atrium itself. The vaulted ceiling isn't merely a mounting point — it's a frame that gives the inflatables scale, presence, and a specific relationship to the people moving through the space below. The installation makes a quiet demand of its audience: look up, step inside, and let color and air do what a season does.
Walk into the atrium at ICD Brookfield Place in Dubai and you enter a suspended summer that never ends. Hanging from the vaulted ceiling is a riot of inflatable forms—flowers in impossible colors, beach balls frozen mid-bounce, inner tubes coiled like snakes, and presiding over it all, a radiant sun that seems to pulse with heat. The installation is called "Under the Sun," and it's the work of Craig & Karl, the artist duo whose inflatables have become a signature language for turning blank architectural space into something alive with play.
Craig and Karl describe what they were after with the project in straightforward terms: they wanted to bottle the feeling of summer—its warmth, its brightness, its uncomplicated joy—and pour it into a single room. Not a painting of summer, not a photograph of it, but the actual sensation of being inside the season, experienced from within an architectural void that most people walk through without seeing. The atrium becomes a garden, and the garden becomes a party, and the party is happening above your head.
This installation is the latest addition to what the artists call their Mateys universe, a growing collection of expressive inflatable characters that have appeared in unexpected places. Sometimes they spring up on bridges. Sometimes they dangle from ceilings like in Dubai. What they do consistently is interrupt the ordinary relationship between a person and a building. They make you look up. They make you smile. They transform spaces that were designed to be neutral into spaces that have personality, even mischief.
The partnership between Craig, who works from New York, and Karl, who works from London, has endured across continents and years because it was built on something solid. They met in college and spent considerable time working in the same studio, the kind of proximity that either breaks a creative relationship or fuses it permanently. In their case, it fused. They describe their process now as a two-way conversation that begins with an initial idea and unfolds all the way through to completion. One throws something out. The other builds on it. They know when something feels right because they've spent enough time together to trust that feeling.
What makes the Dubai installation distinctive is how it uses the architecture itself as a collaborator. The vaulted ceiling becomes a canvas, but more than that—it becomes a frame that gives the inflatables weight and presence. These aren't objects floating in a void. They're suspended in a specific place, in a specific light, in a specific relationship to the people moving through the space below. The installation asks something of its audience: look up, step inside, let yourself feel what summer feels like when it's distilled into color and form and air.
Citations marquantes
We wanted to capture the warmth, vibrancy, and joy of summer—distilled into one space and experienced from within the expansive summer garden atrium.— Craig & Karl
Projects unfold as a two-way conversation from the initial idea through to completion, with each of us throwing things out, building on the other's ideas, and knowing when something feels right.— Craig & Karl on their collaborative process
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