Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios

Founded in 2009, Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios Ltd. designs experiences for you to become an astronaut in your living room while dark energy is being created in your kitchen sink and a volcano erupts on your couch. They are an interdisciplinary design studio which devises subversive events, experiences, and feature-length films. They work on multimedia, highly ambitious projects to empower countercultures and communities by building platforms for them to challenge power structures, while also allowing for change and critical thinking through multi-faceted immersive experiences. They are pioneers in the design of experiences, their mission is to reveal meanings and power structures through experiential practices and to foster critical thinking within institutions across the world. They have consulted and worked with leading scientists, creatives, writers, brands, politicians, policymakers, musicians, and engineers worldwide and they have a track record of having successfully challenged public engagement mechanics through theatrical, experiential, and design practices. They rethink and question systems in education, design, distribution, communication, public speaking, politics, economics, history, and sociology towards further pluralistic models which we implement in their projects. The team of architects, graphic designers, textile designers, philosophers and more are based in an artist collective in a train carriage on top of a nightclub. Plurality is one of their core tenets and as a result they support the training of youths, through the University of the Underground, a tuition-free charity they founded in 2017 with board members such as Pussy Riot, Noam Chomsky, and Massive Attack; it supports free, pluralistic, and transnational education. In 2020, Dezeen shortlisted Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios Ltd. one of the world’s best design studios and in 2021 The Dots selected Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios Ltd. as one of the “Top 50 companies to work for in 2021”.