North Africa brings the “Caravan” pavilion to the VIII Moscow Interior and Design Week

Companies from North Africa will take part in the VIII Moscow Interior and Design Week, running in the capital from August 13 to 16. Their national pavilion turns on the region’s craft traditions, artistic schools and contemporary design the same crafts, ideas and imagery that traveled with the caravans for centuries, tying together the civilizations of North Africa and the East. Nearly 1,300 companies from all over the world will feature across the exhibition, the business program and the citywide events.

The pavilion is organized with the Egyptian Exporters Association in partnership with Cairo Design Week. Its concept casts design as a language of cultural exchange one still very much alive today.

The design of the stand turns that idea into something you move through. Visitors follow a winding route, retracing a caravan’s path across the desert. Sheer lengths of fabric fall loosely from the ceiling, suggesting tents and dunes at once and lending the space a sense of shifting air and changing terrain. Nothing is spelled out literally the story comes through in light, texture, material and object.

On show are furniture, woodwork, textiles, interior pieces and complete contemporary schemes. Traditional techniques get a fresh reading here, and centuries-old skill becomes the ground for design of the moment. Every object carries a clear respect for local materials, for handwork and for the region’s cultural heritage.

The exhibitors include Lumberjack, Caja, Nuvelti, Georgette Antiques, Cleopatra Trading Co, Rosaline, International Textile Co. for Textile Industry and Artefacto. Their collections capture the range of contemporary North African design, where traditional craft meets a modern eye. Interior designer, multidisciplinary artist and art historian Lyudmila Rozvodovskaya also had a hand in the pavilion, her deep study of the East’s artistic traditions shaping its concept.

The pavilion forms part of “Moscow Cairo,” a special project with Cairo Design Week. The format continues the international thread of the Moscow Interior and Design Week, which took its 2025 edition to the China International Furniture Fair in Shanghai.

The region also features in the business program. Egypt’s design scene will be represented by Cairo Design Week founder Hisham Mahdy and DABS Egypt architect Hasan Fikry. The program brings together more than 200 speakers, among them figures from Belarus, Egypt, India, Turkey, the UAE and Uzbekistan.

The national pavilion of the North African countries invites visitors to see design as an unbroken journey of ideas, materials and craft. “Caravan” shows how traditions born on the ancient trade routes find a new voice — and become a source of inspiration for the designers and makers working today.