Third Culture: Hybrid Identities Shaping Design
A reflective piece written by our Co-Founder & Client Director, Bharti Sharma
I had lunch last week with an old friend. He is an Australian Indian, in Dubai, on a business trip for one of his ventures. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, we realised we're both 'thirdlings' and there's plenty more of us out here...
Not from one place. Not even two. Shaped by everything in between. That lens filters everything. How we live. What we build. What we return to.
We talked about our homes as reflections of our journey. My space is stripped back—calm, meditative, almost transcendent. Influences from Japan and Scandinavia sit at the core to honour minimalism. Scents of burning oud and sandalwood at dusk and dawn. But there are unique objects in the corners. Things I’ve picked up over time.
Every few months, I find myself on pilgrimage in India. It's never planned. Ever. Rath Yatra in Puri. An ancestral temple in Manali. A Muslim shrine in Ajmer. Something always comes back with me. These pieces I bring back to keep in my personal space are reminders. They let me reset. Create. Build.
Our lunch conversation stayed with me, because it became so clear to me that we’re entering a design era that’s not about East versus West. It’s about spaces that reflect thirdlings like me. Those belonging everywhere and nowhere, all at once.
It’s a reflection on third culture design. Not really a trend piece. Just a thread of what we carry, and how it shows up in the spaces we shape.
Enjoy x
The term Third Culture refers to individuals, often expatriates or children of diaspora, who grow up negotiating multiple cultural influences. These Third Culture Kids and multirooted individuals weave together elements from different places into a "third" culture of their own. In interior design, this layered identity is giving rise to spaces rich with emotional resonance and cultural nostalgia. Homes and commercial interiors are becoming canvases for spatial storytelling, where memories of a faraway homeland meet the realities of an adopted country. The result is a design language of fusion. One that balances modern living with heritage, and personal identity with global influences. As one design studio put it, diasporic design is about understanding the rhythm of longing and the quiet rituals of belonging. In the following sections, we explore how this phenomenon unfolds across four regions: Dubai, India, London, and the United States, highlighting demographic contexts, aesthetic expressions of nostalgia, and examples of Third Culture narratives in design.
Dubai: A Melting Pot Seeking Belonging through Design
Dubai is a rapidly expanding multicultural hub, home to over 200 nationalities drawn by its luxury and opportunities. Beneath this cosmopolitan surface, many expatriates experience a deeper tension: a lack of belonging in the UAE’s transient society. Children of expats often grow up speaking multiple languages and blending cultural norms, yet remain outsiders in both their parents' homeland and their UAE home. With strict laws offering no path to citizenship for foreign workers, the feeling of impermanence cuts deep.
In this context, interior design has emerged as a way to reflect identity and build belonging. Designers blend cultural elements from across continents to help residents feel more rooted. Corporate offices, for instance, have begun integrating art and decor that nod to employees’ varied heritages. A gesture that fosters pride and connection. In private residences, owners commission interiors that reflect their hybrid upbringing. A single home might pair Moroccan rugs with Scandinavian furniture, or set Japanese shoji screens alongside Arabian mashrabiya panels. The result is a kind of curated fusion. Vibrant, intentional, and emotionally resonant.
One notable example is the proposed Maan Center, a thesis concept imagining a community space for Adult Third Culture Kids in the historic Al Fahidi district. Repurposing a traditional Emirati home, the design draws on heritage materials and local vernaculars. Courtyards and wind towers are reimagined for globally minded youth. The space is envisioned as a judgment free environment for workshops, casual meetups, and creative collaboration. Its architecture becomes the metaphor: old forms holding new stories. Here, the city’s layered identity is not a burden to resolve, but a richness to be embraced.
India: Weaving Memory and Modernity in Diaspora Design
India has one of the largest diaspora populations in the world, with over 35 million people of Indian origin living abroad. Their influence flows in both directions. While Indian culture travels with them, global design trends also find their way back. At the heart of this exchange is a desire for rootedness. In diaspora homes, design becomes an act of remembrance.
A Toronto living room might glow with terracotta diyas and dokra brass figurines. A Silicon Valley kitchen may feature hand painted Rajasthani ceramic jars. These are not just decorative flourishes. They are emotional anchors. Quiet reminders of identity, ritual, and ancestry. Many NRIs also create sacred corners in their modern Western homes. Puja rooms, meditation alcoves, or prayer nooks that function as cultural sanctuaries.
Even without large scale renovations, diaspora families find ways to transform generic layouts into meaningful, memory rich spaces. A carved wooden screen, a Madhubani painting, a brass lamp. All subtle but potent. These homes are not themed; they are storied.
Within India, designers are also tapping into this hybrid aesthetic. Sunita Kohli was among the first to blend Indian craft traditions with luxury modernism. Her use of brass Urlis, temple doors, and Tanjore paintings in high end Delhi homes redefined what Indian sophistication could look like. Today, restaurants and boutiques across Mumbai and Bangalore pair sleek architecture with regional craft. Terracotta pendant lights, Kathakali masks, jute and khadi textiles. This is not nostalgia. It is continuity.
In Punjab, a reverse migration has created a different expression of Third Culture. UK and Canada based families are building homes modeled after their lives abroad. California style villas in rural Ludhiana. These may serve as status symbols, but they are also acts of reconciliation. As one parent put it: a small price to pay to make the children feel at home in their roots.
Whether bringing India to the world or the world back to India, this design movement is not about mixing styles for aesthetics alone. It is about making space for layered identities. And in that space, between continents, timelines, and traditions, something truly personal is taking shape.
London: Personal Histories and Public Narratives in the British Interior
London has long been a cultural crossroads. With over 40 percent of its population born outside the UK, the city’s homes and spaces are layered with stories of migration, memory, and multicultural influence. In London, interior design does not follow a singular national aesthetic. Instead, it adapts to the lives of its residents. Nigerian British, Bengali British, Iranian British, and beyond. Each layering their homes with symbolic references that speak to lineage as much as location.
Design here is often about quiet assertion. A classic British terraced house might contain a living room where a Caribbean grandmother’s china cabinet stands beside a modular Ikea bookshelf. In another household, prayer mats from Istanbul lie across a polished parquet floor. These juxtapositions are not ironic. They are personal. Composed with the unselfconscious elegance of identity being lived rather than explained.
Restaurants and public spaces have embraced this aesthetic of narrative too. Dishoom, a beloved Bombay style eatery, reconstructs an entire era of 1940s Irani cafes. Vintage ceiling fans, sepia photographs, and Persian signage. This is not set design. It is cultural memory made tangible.
In private homes, the same logic applies. One British Ghanaian designer describes using Ankara textiles for accent walls. A Tamil family might incorporate kolam patterns into tiling. These gestures make space for pride, ritual, and complexity. They reject the erasure of cultural nuance in favor of quiet hybridity.
United States: Homes as Vessels of Heritage and Resistance
The American interior has never been neutral. For communities shaped by immigration, displacement, or systemic exclusion, design has always been an act of reclamation. Over 44 million people in the U.S. today are foreign born, and many more are second generation. From Los Angeles to New Jersey, homes are mosaics of cultural inheritance and adaptation.
A Filipino American family might frame ancestral weaving beside a mid century dining table. An Ethiopian household in D.C. might convert a sunroom into a coffee ceremony corner. A Black Southern home might contain what scholars have called "legacy rooms". Spaces dedicated to family archives, heirlooms, or music.
Interior designers working across these communities often speak of creating rooms that feel emotionally safe, not just beautiful. Whether through color palettes drawn from native landscapes or the integration of sacred objects, the goal is resonance. For many, this means centering ritual. Shrines, Sabbath tables, altars, or even just a grandmother’s pot rack.
This shift is also visible in museums and design galleries. Exhibits like "Liberatory Living" at the Museum of the African Diaspora show that the aesthetics of home can be political, personal, and profoundly ancestral. The American Third Culture interior doesn’t just blend styles. It tells the story of how families have survived, adapted, and flourished. One room at a time.
Sources
Soni, P. (2024). A Third Culture Hub: Ma’an (together). Thesis on multicultural spatial identity in Dubai. https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/items/22125161-6a75-4655-8ff6-f8e19ade23e8
Halo Interiors (2023). Creating a Fusion of Cultures: Dubai’s Multicultural Interior Design. https://www.halo.ae/creating-a-fusion-of-cultures-dubais-multicultural-interior-design/
Biswas, A. (2025). How NRIs Style Their Homes with Indian Touches. SowPeace. https://www.sowpeace.in/post/how-nris-style-their-homes
Vijay, M. K. (2022). For the Love of Art & India. Profile of Sunita Kohli. Pravasi Indians Magazine. https://www.pravasindians.com/for-the-love-of-art-and-india/
India Today Archives (2004). Punjabi NRIs spend fortune to recreate overseas homes in India. https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/nation/story/20040308-punjabi-nris-spend-fortune-to-recreate-overseas-homes-in-india-790122-2004-03-08
Ray, D. (2023). Make Yourself at Home: The Interiors of the Diaspora. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/d20f83c4-3bfe-48b1-934a-601b857cb3e4
Kaila, J. (2021). 4 Asian Americans on Sharing Their Roots through Interior Design. https://www.domino.com/content/asian-american-interior-designers/
Feaster, F. (2024). Heritage Design Is Becoming More Diverse. Atlanta Journal-Constitution. https://www.ajc.com/things-to-do/home-and-garden/heritage-design-is-becoming-more-diverse-and-these-atlanta-creatives-are-leading-the-way/V6E7KCEJVZBPBPKX7JYLBH2ZSE/
Mohan, A. (2024). Liberatory Living. STIRworld. https://www.stirworld.com/see-features-liberatory-living-at-moad-san-francisco
Skidmore, M. (n.d.). Designing Dishoom. WePresent. https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/dishoom-interiors/
