Montaigne Design was founded in Hong Kong in 2011 and is headquartered in Shanghai. Over time we have added an overseas branch in Dubai and a branding studio in Singapore. People sometimes assume the three offices are interchangeable. They are not. Each city contributes something to a project that the others cannot.
Shanghai gives us craft and capacity. After more than a decade of building for international hospitality groups in China, our studio is hours from world-class joinery workshops, stone yards, lighting fabricators, and FF&E ateliers. When a project needs a four-metre dining table cut from a single book-matched slab, or a cast-bronze handle made to a one-off pattern, we know the maker who can do it well, and we know the lead time. This is not a romantic claim about manufacturing — it is the practical reality of where the supply chain for high-end interiors actually sits.
Dubai gives us climate and scale. The Gulf market asks for villas that the Shanghai market does not — properties of 1,500 square metres and up, with majlis, family-private wings, staff quarters, landscape, and pool design integrated from day one. The climate also asks different questions of materials. Stone selected in Shanghai for visual depth must also be tested for the Gulf summer. Timber that performs in Pudong may not perform in Palm Jumeirah. Working in Dubai sharpens our material literacy in a way our Shanghai work does not.
Singapore gives us the language of brand. Our XY Branding & Graphic Design studio in Singapore exists because hospitality interiors and brand identity are inseparable for new luxury hotel brands. A new operator coming to market needs a logo, a typographic system, signage, collateral, and a website that read as one voice with the building. Holding both disciplines in-house means the brand book is not handed to us late — it is co-developed alongside the architecture.
These three contributions are not interchangeable. A villa in Dubai is materially specified through Shanghai. A new hotel brand is identified through Singapore and built through Shanghai. A Shanghai office tower lobby is detailed in Shanghai but reviewed by the Dubai team for climate-equivalent stress tests. The studio is one practice with three vantage points, and the work is sharper because of it.