Shazad Azam

Founder, International Design Associates

Few design leaders have balanced creative vision, commercial insight, and entrepreneurialambition as effectively as Shazad Azam. As the Founder of International Design Associates (IDA), he has spent more than 25 years shaping spaces, building businesses, and redefining design excellence across the hospitality, residential, workplace, and retail sectors.

Founded in 2013, IDA has grown from a boutique design studio into an international multidisciplinary practice of more than 100 professionals, with offices across Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Thailand, and London. Under Shazad's leadership, the firm has become one of the region's fastest-growing design practices, delivering luxury hospitality destinations,branded residences, and mixed-use developments.

For Shazad, design is never just about aesthetics. He believes the strongest ideas are rooted in clarity, functionality, and purpose. His work is driven by empathy, creating spaces that elevate brands, enrich experiences, and become part of people's memories. He has also built a collaborative culture that brings together architecture, interiors, landscape, lighting, wayfinding,and procurement into one seamless design offering.

As the industry continues to evolve, Shazad remains focused on innovation, sustainability, andexpanding into new markets while staying true to the principles that have defined his career. His ambition remains remarkably simple: to create places people do not just admire, but remember.