As part of the international conference Limit / No Limit, organized in Paris by ART DESIGN Recherche, Mahdi Naim was invited to give an in-depth interview to A+E Magazine, focused on contemporary issues in design, research and creation.

Published in 2024 under the title “At the Crossroads of Limits,” this exchange returns to the foundations of his approach — simultaneously experimental, theoretical, and positioned at the intersection of cultures, disciplines and registers of thought.

The interview addresses the tensions that traverse design practice today: between rationality and intuition, technological innovation and symbolic responsibility, material production and the construction of meaning.

Mahdi Naim develops a reflection on limits as spaces of transformation rather than fixed frontiers. He discusses how his research integrates psychology, perception, cultural dynamics and the symbolic dimensions of objects — and how these dimensions are not peripheral to industrial design, but constitute its deep structure.

Limits as Design Space

The notion of limits — technical, cultural, cognitive — is not a constraint to be overcome. It is a generative space. When a material reaches its structural limits, it reveals properties that normal use conceals. When a design method reaches its conceptual limits, it opens onto new questions that conventional approaches cannot even formulate.

This is what the “Limit / No Limit” conference explored: what happens at the edges of design? What becomes possible — or impossible — when we push against the boundaries of what is known, expected, normalized?

Design at the Intersection of Cultures and Disciplines

One of the recurring themes in the interview is the question of designing from a position that is simultaneously rooted and transversal. Mahdi Naim works from Morocco, with Moroccan craft traditions, for international markets. This position is not a contradiction. It is a creative resource — provided one resists the temptation to collapse the tension into comfortable cultural fusion or strategic exoticism.

Working at the crossroads means maintaining the tension, not resolving it. It means being precise about what you bring from each tradition, what you adapt, what you leave intact. This precision is the opposite of eclecticism.

Interview published in A+E Magazine, 2024, following the international conference “Limit / No Limit” — ART DESIGN Recherche, Paris.