2026
Creative Direction
Le Freak is a restaurant bar designed to keep you looking. Three main maximalistic pillars catch you first: an oversized honey colored lighting installation hovering over the space, a giant walk-in closet bar and a fish installation behind the DJ. In between, every detail is an echo of the other, from rounded angles to matching materials.
Interior Design: Tala Mortada
Contracting and Executive Drawings: From Scratch
Installation Production: Tala Mortada, Anthony Karim
Agency: Clap Clap Studios and Factory People
Graphic Design: Tala Mortada and Hadi Hamade
Photographer: Dominique Ricci
2023
Creative Direction
Soul Kitchen is a restaurant and cocktail bar, designed as an ode to the Arab diaspora that spread through Latin America in the 19th century. The interior, branding and communication are created to represent migration, and the feeling of home outside home.
The kinetic installation behind the bar, designed by Tala Mortada and Hamza Mekdad, represents the eternal migration of Lebanese people that forces them to build in every new place, a new home.
Interior Design: Tala Mortada
Contracting: Builtrite
Executive Drawings: XO Atelier
Installation Mechanical Engineering and Build-Up: Sevag Babikian
Installation production: From Scratch
Agency: Clap Clap Studios / Factory People
Creative Directors: Tala Mortada and Hamza Mekdad
Graphic Designers: Tala Mortada, Hamza Mekdad and Oliver Matar
Illustrators: Ayla Mortada, Tala Mortada and Hamza Mekdad
Photographer: Lewis Semrani
2024
Creative Direction
Reunion is a Dubai club that represents the city’s alternative sound. Built around an exceptional sound system and a commitment to great music and proper dancefloor culture, the space is deliberately minimal. Stainless steel defines the interior, with repeated perforations concealing a grid of LED lines that reveal and accentuate its geometry.
Interior Design: Tala Mortada
Contracting: Builtrite
Executive Drawings: XO Atelier
Lighting Integration: Pulse
Agency: Clap Clap Studios / Factory People
Creative Director: Tala Mortada
Graphic Designer: Hiba Yassine
Photographer: Lewis Semrani
2018
Set on top of a mountain in Lebanon, Anya is a stone Stone Henge inspired installation around a round concrete floor. It is meant to keep a natural delimitation between that area and its wild surrounding.
Design: Tala Mortada
Concept: Tala Mortada and Ziad El Zein
2017
Set inside The Grand Factory, an industrial club on top of a mattress factory. Radiators is a machine that hovers up and down above the dancefloor, continually creating shapes, lines and combinations that transform the entire space.
Inspired by my childhood memory of a vintage radiator at home, that emitted a haunting orange light behind a metal grid, the Radiators fit organically with the Grand Factory’s industrial aesthetic. The LEDs are encrusted in 14 rusty metallic boxes, and hidden behind multiple layers of plexi and wire grids to achieve that old radiator effect.
Concept and Design: Tala Mortada
Mechanical Engineering and Build-Up: Sevag Babikian
Production: From Scratch
Programming and Lighting: Julien Yammine
Agency: Clap Clap Studios / Factory People
2024
Creative Direction
Adriatique asked us to design their stage for their show in Beirut. Having done one immersive installation with dancers before, I decided to take it up a notch. With invisible stairs covered with screens, left and right of a giant layered screen. It became a vertical dancefloor where dancer silhouettes, visuals and music create endless combinations, based on optical illusions and choreography.
Concept and Setup Design: Tala Mortada
Lighting, Design and Plotting: Julien Yammine
Visuals and Mapping: John Dave
Choreography: Thelma
Production: Impact Vision
Agency: Clap Clap Studios / Factory People
2021
When the founder of Factory Berlin challenged me to break all the rules, we couldn’t design regular co-working tables. The biggest table ever was born, where you can play ping pong, DJ, engage in a game of chess, work over the table, under the table, and around it.
Concept and Creative Direction: Tala Mortada
Architecture Studio: Nod Studios
Agency: Factory Berlin
2026
Another optical illusion for our Great Escape festival, this time I layered custom square screens alternating to create a pattern of void, and a pattern of visuals, over three different layers. Each viewer saw a different outcome depending on where they were standing, and the best part was when the sun came up.
Concept and Design: Tala Mortada
Lighting Design: Julien Yammine
VJ: Elias Bathany
Executive Architecture: Peter Akoury
Production: Inaction Studios
Agency: Clap Clap Studios / Factory People
2017
13 Videos to promote 13 CUNXTSAT parties at the Grand Factory, with 13 set ups on the dancefloor.
Art Director: Tala Mortada
Director: Wassim Bou Malham
Producer: Jimmy Dib
Dancers: Jana Younes and Pierre Khadra
Agency: Clap Clap Studios / Factory People
Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Factory People and Clap Clap Studios.
tala@factory-people.com
instagram.com/talamortadaworks
I am a multidisciplinary artist with no specific focus on anything. From concept creation, branding, interior, to marketing; when projects are thought through with a 360 approach they get a lot of soul.
I selected a few of the things I’ve worked on recently for this website.
GQ Magazine
2023
Conde Nast Traveler
2024
Design Middle East
2024
Fact
2024
Emirates Woman
2025
Yung
2023
Refinery29
2017
Entrepreneur.me
2026
i-d.co
2017
(Photos upon inquiry)
Grand Factory, Beirut
2014
Reunion, Beirut
2016
Soul Kitchen, Beirut
2015
AHM, Beirut
2017
Soul Kitchen, Dubai
2022
AHM 2.0, Beirut
2023
Reunion, Dubai
2023
Le Freak, Beirut
2026
Love Night
2017
House Of Pop
2017
CUNXTSAT
2017
Late Knights
2017
2ND SUN
2017