The Monocle Minute
On Design

Dubai Design Week attracts creatives and culture-hungry tastemakers every year, including Monocle’s design editor, Nic Monisse, who kicks us off this week with his first impressions. From the event’s bespoke pavilion by Ola Saad Znad, inspired by traditional reed-building techniques on Iraq’s southern marshes, to coral-based construction and a mural made of local resources, it’s clear that this is an event where materials matter.

The 10th edition of Dubai Design Week kicked off yesterday and runs until Sunday. It features more than 500 designers, brands and creatives from at least 40 countries, and showcases works that range from the practical to the experimental. The aim? To push the boundaries of creativity and further cement Dubai’s status as the region’s design hub. Here are five takeaways from the opening day.

Invest in the best
The likes of Abu Dhabi and Dubai have long imported starchitects for major works – a tendency that I long assumed would have a negative effect on the strength of the local scene. But Paris-based designer India Mahdavi, who is in Dubai presenting work with CC-Tapis, proves otherwise. “What’s interesting is that every time these architects come to town, they host a workshop sharing their knowledge,” she says. “That’s a good thing for the local community.”

If the works on show at a Royal Institute of British Architects-backed exhibition at Dubai Design Week are anything to go by, the future’s looking bright. Designs by students from Heriot-Watt University Dubai, Abu Dhabi University, the American University in Dubai and the American University of Sharjah felt both contemporary and contextually appropriate.

Sensory overload
BMW created a pavilion that not only looked good but smelled good too. It upholstered a boxy structure with plush peach pillows and placed a bowl filled with rose oil in its centre, providing a moment of calm and reminding designers that good design should engage all of our senses.

Presentation is important
A quick note for those presenting at design events across the world. Invest in physical installations – just ensure that the materials are sourced sensibly. There are few things more disheartening than travelling from one country to another just to watch a pitch on a TV screen. The most memorable stands in Dubai were those that had some mass behind them.

Honour the regional vernacular
It can be common for architects working in rapidly developing regions such as the Gulf to ape the dominant design language of the time. The result is that in Dubai, much of the newer architecture has a Western feel (landing at DXB, you’re immediately hit with ads for Italianate developments overlooking the Creek). But a pavilion designed by Ross Lovegrove and Ila Colombo of Dubai-based studio Deond shows that this doesn’t have to be the case. Its design feels highly modern while drawing inspiration from traditional forms of Arabic architecture.

Material evolution
You will read a lot more about materials in the stories below (it’s a hot topic). But I want to take this chance to highlight the evolution of one particular material: mycelium. When it first started to emerge in the mainstream more than a decade ago, it often looked like dirty papier-mâché. Now, it’s a sleek, appealing material. Designers Dima Al Srouri, Dalia Hamati, Andy Cartier and Rosa Hämäläinen showed this with their “Reroot” installation at Dubai Design Week, creating modular shelters from an impressive mycelium-based material that looks more like solid stone than pulped paper.

Read on for highlights from the Dubai Design District, also known as D3, where the installations, exhibitions and workshops highlighted below are now on show.

Nic Monisse is Monocle’s design editor.

Iraq-based architect Ola Saad Znad has created a bespoke pavilion for this year’s Dubai Design Week. “A Present/Absent Mudhif” is an enclosed shelter inspired by houses that are found in the swamps of southern Iraq and made from reeds using traditional techniques. The pavilion is part of a larger research project in which Saad Znad is investigating the potential uses of ancient materials and ways of making.

“The world should see how amazing this indigenous architecture is,” she says. To explore its applications, the architect has made stools and tables, also from reeds. “The Marsh Arabs have been using this durable natural material for 5,000 years. I’m planning to craft urban furniture in a similar way, from seats to shading structures. It’s timeless.”
olaznad.com

In the design world, it’s almost impossible to escape discussions about materiality these days. Across all disciplines, creatives are increasingly conscious of the environmental impact of the materials that they use. Accordingly, many are looking for alternatives to brick, cement, steel and other staples that have notoriously big carbon footprints. It’s an issue that Colab Digital, an Emirati building-product library, is exploring during Dubai Design Week. Its showcase, titled “Origins Reframed”, highlights the potential of new interior and exterior materials derived from resources that are indigenous to the UAE.

The display at the heart of Dubai Design District features a mural crafted from UAE-made construction supplies. It’s accompanied by a presentation of innovative construction materials made from date seeds, palm biomass, dried pods and construction waste. If any of these enter common usage, they will help architects to create cleaner, greener buildings while imbuing them with a stronger sense of place.
colabdigital.ae

Addis Ababa-based designer and architectural researcher Miriam Hillawi Abraham has previously showcased her work at the Venice Biennale’s International Architecture Exhibition and the Sharjah Architecture Triennial. At Dubai Design Week, she is presenting an installation called “Material Witnesses and Narrating Lifeforms”, inspired by the coral used as a construction material on the East African coast and in the Gulf. Abraham hopes that the installation will prompt viewers to explore the potential of living, dynamic materials.

Why focus on coral?
I’m researching living materials. By “living”, I mean materials that are organic – that breathe and respond to human presence. These include salt, honey and coral, things that we associate with healing, ritual and mythology. I have become really interested in coral stone and how it’s used in the Gulf. When merchants settled in the UAE, they couldn’t find rocks or stone so they dived for coral to build with. I have learned that this is a far wider practice that extends to other areas contending with material scarcity.

What are some of the challenges of working with it?
With a living material such as coral, the way that we currently use it means that you have to kill it in order to work with it. I’m interested in repair and preservation. You can’t repair a coral-stone wall without doing damage to the environment.

What’s the goal of your research?
It’s all about living more lightly on Earth. We can learn a lot from materials that already do this. Coral, for instance, forms reefs by living with its dead and building around them.

For more about the designers you should know, tune in to ‘Monocle on Design’ on Monocle Radio.

Dubai Design Week’s Maker Space has been a hit at recent iterations of the fair, offering curious locals and visiting professionals alike the chance to attend workshops where they can create a range of objects. Emirati school-furniture manufacturer Kidzink is the sponsor of this year’s six-day programme.

Our pick of the workshops was the exceptionally playful “Fundamentals of Design in Sticker-Making’, run by artists and designers Sara Almulla and Aisha Alameri. The duo were on hand to teach a group of students how to transform digital designs into printed stickers, as well as discuss the evolution of contemporary Emirati visual and graphic culture. “A lot of younger Emiratis are influenced by Western culture,” says Almulla. “We need to find a way to combine that with Emirati traditions and appeal to a wide audience while also fostering cultural appreciation and exchange.” Alameri explains that her own artistic and graphic work blurs cultures. “When I make stickers and graphics, I often take characters from Western movies and add a local touch,” she says. “For instance, I might take a male character from a Western cartoon and make him wear a traditional kandura.”
kidzinkdesign.com

Creatives come to Dubai Design Week from across the region to exhibit, mingle and collaborate. But the festival is also a place of cross-pollination for events. Design Doha, for example, is hosting a reading lounge and presenting a new book, Arab Design Now. Drawing on the most recent Design Doha biennial, it features profiles of designers from across the Gulf, the Levant and North Africa, and is published by Italy’s Silvana Editoriale.

The publication functions as a guide to emerging and established talent, featuring the likes of Bahrain-based architect Anne Holtrop, Lebanese-Finnish ceramicist Nada Rizk and multidisciplinary maker Asma Derouiche. If you’re looking to commission work in the region, Arab Design Now is a good place to start.
silvanaeditoriale.it; designdoha.org.qa

While major design events such as Milan’s Salone del Mobile and Paris’s Maison & Objet tend to celebrate commercial design brands, there’s a particular focus on craft and smaller producers in Dubai. Head to D3 and you’ll see several student showcases taking pride of place. Perhaps the most exciting among them is the American University of Sharjah’s “Six Degrees Offsite” exhibition.

A continuation of the institution’s exhibition of the same name, which debuted in June, the showcase features work by students from its College of Architecture, Art and Design. Among the works on display are a series of wooden chairs by design students Nada Barqawi, Faiza Imtiaz, Zainab Gawhari, Fatema Al Osta, Yara Shaaban and Joan D Silva (pictured clockwise from top left).
aus.edu