Every year Dubai Design Week grows at the same pace as the skyscrapers that cleave the city’s skyline one after the other, as it waits for The Tower (with its kilometre-high tip), designed by Calatrava, to set the new world record.
The programme for the third edition, which was held from 14 to 17 November 2017 with an influx of 60,000 visitors (50% more than in 2016), was once again catalysed by D3, the Dubai Design District that inside and around its 11 Foster + Partners designed buildings (to which a nearly 1 million square-metre Creative Community will be added by 2019) gathers together the majority of the more than 200 events, workshops and installations. Alongside the big-name brands, some of which debuted this year (like Swarovski with the glittering Prologue by Fredrikson Stallard or Driade with its first single-brand showroom in the Middle East), there was no shortage of exhibitions specifically dedicated to local talents: Middle East Design Now! and Once Upon DESIGN: New Routes for Arabian Heritage, curated by Noor Aldabbagh, as well as Abwab that featured (under the pavilion built by Fahed + Architects out of old rusted bedsprings) objects by 47 creatives from the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa, South Asia) who from the first to the last were selected through a democratic “domino” system.
And then there was the seductive, luminous sculpture The Silent Call, designed by Khalid Shafar for Lasvit. The Bohemian crystal reproductions of the cupolas of real mosques that are programmed to function as a clock that marks the most important moments of the day, while this year the focus of Iconic City was on recreating with the exhibition Loading… Casa the ambiance of Casablanca through a combination of sound art, graphic design, video, photography, collecting and interior design.
The programme of talks opened with Sir David Adjaye, who spoke about his method for getting to know urban spaces (he relies on enterprising taxi drivers and chatterboxes), and continued with numerous others including ones by Italians Mario Cucinella and PepsiCo’s chief design officerMauro Porcini.
Our country also had a massive presence at Downtown Design, the commercial heart of Dubai Design Week, which in its fifth edition doubled its size with 70 new international and regional high-end brands for a total of more than 150 exhibitors from 25 countries. A few interesting native brands found a home here, like the handcrafted cement tiles by Mosaico, that come from the Ras al-Khaimah emirate, and many Made in Italy brands (from Moroso to CC-Tapis) as well as the Italian Pavilion organised by ITA Italian Trade Agency, with a showcase of 17 brands, some of which gave a nod to the Middle Eastern aesthetic.
A few steps from the fair, the big draw is still the Global Grad Show where designers from 92 schools based in 43 different countries present their work. For its third edition the curator Brendan McGetrick selected 200 innovative prototypes that fall under the three macro themes of Empower, Connect, Sustain, which more than striving towards an abstract concept of beauty as an end to itself, invite viewers to “make the world a better place”, as McGetrick explains, “through objects that serve to simultaneously diagnose and cure as yet unexpressed needs”. Among the participating projects this year was the Miko+: Physiotherapeutic Jewellery bracelet collection, which won the inaugural Progress Prize. Presented by two students from Poland’s School of Form, it was designed to stylishly counteract issues like carpal tunnel syndrome (which among other things can result from the excessive use of a mouse).
Global Grad Show. Miko+: physioterapeutic jewelery by Ewa Dulcet and Martyna Świerczyńska (School of Form, Poznań), winners of the first edition of the Progress Prize, reserved for students.
Also aiming to have a positive effect on the body is the Smile Mirror, which thanks to a facial recognition system only becomes reflective when the user sports a smile (healthful even in the form of a mechanical act). Many were the projects on display that gave a boost to the senses of those with disabilities, like the Folks kitchenware for the blind set of utensils, designed to protect the blind from burns and cuts, frequent kitchen accidents even among the sighted. A lot of attention was paid to linguistic comprehension too, a need that has arisen from the large influx of migrants and from dyslexia, both to create empathy towards one of the most common learning disabilities (3-7% of the population have it) but also to make reading easier thanks to the use of special Oton Glass glasses, which translate written information into audio. There were also a few provocations like the gun designed by the Taiwanese designer Yi-Fei Chen that collects tears and freezes them into bullets to relieve all the frustrations that young designers routinely have to bear. Many too were the offerings tied to sustainability, ranging from water purification systems all the way to totally green sneakers made from seaweed or recycled plastic, as well as children’s clothes made from a specially folded fabric that grows along with the child. All ideas decidedly projected towards the future, in keeping with the upcoming Expo Dubai 2020, dubbed Connecting Minds, Creating The Future.
But the design week wasn’t limited to D3, it also reached into the city’s other neighbourhoods, like the Nad Al Sheba area that is home to Tashkeel, an organisation housed in one of Dubai’s oldest buildings (we’re talking about the 1960s, naturally) that supports young designers through residences and cross-pollinations between East and West, and the Al Quoz neighbourhood, home to the always lively Alserkal Avenue, a creative district that hosts the multi-purpose Concrete building designed by OMA and several dozen coworking spaces, showrooms and galleries like the SvenM design studio by Sven Mueller, which is showing an exclusive installation of Arrangements, created by Michael Anastassiades for Flos.