Introducing: ‘Abwab’ at Dubai Design Week

A major initiative within the inaugural Dubai Design Week (26-31 October), Abwab is a series of six pavilions built to celebrate and showcase the work of the most exciting designers, studios and curators from six different countries in the MENASA region.

‘Abwab’, which means ‘doors’ in Arabic, is a unique initiative that will act as a direct portal onto the region’s local arab design talent. A curator from each participating country has been elected to lead the designers to work individually or collectively and generate never beforeseen design content under one unifying theme, this year being – Games: The Element of Play in Culture. Designers are invited to investigate the games of their countries and how the tools and rules of a place might be understood through its more playful activities.

Across the six purpose-built environments, Abwab will give the designers the opportunity to represent their country’s aesthetic, and in doing so to further define the increasingly rich design language of the region. Abwab will encourage and enable designers to make new connections with other professionals and influencers within the region while also providing them with an entry point to an international marketplace.

Rawan Kashkoush, Creative Director of Abwab, comments: “In a relatively new city like Dubai, there are few trodden paths for designers. Nurturing a homegrown industry – and supporting that throughout region – means creating opportunities for emerging talent.

“Creativity, art and design act as vehicles for movement, as license to communicate without words. Being a part of this growing design community grants access to the thinkers and makers of the region: design is a passport, design has been my passport.”

Integrated into the walkways and open areas of Dubai Design District (d3), the six 50 square metre pavilions have been designed by UAE-based firm, Loci Architecture + Design, to be identical in size and shape, acting as capsules to house each country equally and for visitors to immerse themselves totally in the worlds within.

In order to contextualize the pavilions, the skins are composed of sand, an abundant yet underused local material adapted to perform as intelligent climate control and a veil between the exhibit and audiences before entry. Loci has adopted new techniques and modelling realsize mock-ups to achieve the end results.

Hamad Khoory, Partner at Loci Architecture + Design says: “The greatest challenge for us, was how to design a pavilion that suited our aesthetics both from the inside and outside without affecting the curations of the interior. We selected sand as the structure’s core material; a playful material in the way it moves, accumulates, shifts and the endless interactions we had with it growing up.”

FEATURED CURATORS

Mobius Design Studio (UAE) is a Dubai-based trio of visual communication designers whose approach spans a wide range of design disciplines, from experimenting with kinetic typography to Design House, a curated space of non-commercial design created for Dubai’s Sikka Art Fair.

Waleed Shaalan (Kuwait) is a multidisciplinary architect, artist and storyteller, who is not only the recipient of a series of awards, but has worked with a number of design firms from Perkins and Will in Chicago to SSH Design in Kuwait and has collaborated with esteemed organisations including Atelier Jean Nouvel and Cloud 9 Barcelona.

Salman Jawed (Pakistan) melds new ideas with local materials to create a hybrid of past and present. Leading the way in industrial design in his native country, Jawed is the cofounder of Karachi-based studio, Coalesce.

Arini Creative Platforms (Jordan) is a creative platform that promotes learning in the fields of design, architecture and urbanism. Founded by a trio of architects, the programme endeavours to expand the boundaries of architecture and urbanism through projects and publications.

Basma and Noura Bouzo (Saudi Arabia) are sisters, who between them have helped grow the Saudi art and design scene with their magazine Oasis and the launch of the Saudi Design Week.

Chacha Atallah (Tunisia) showcases her scrupulous eye for detail, which is evident in her collections from ceramic stoneware to furniture build with Tunisian artisans. The founder of architectural firm, Fleury Attalah, she trained in Japan at practices including Shigeru Ban and Kengo Kuma.