Flashback: Installations at the inaugural Dubai Design Week
By Bustler Editors|
Thursday, Dec 3, 2015
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Installations popped up throughout Dubai for their debut during the inaugural Dubai Design Week, which took place this past October. Organized by the Dubai Design District (d3) and the Dubai Design and Fashion Council (DDFC), the event puts the city's diverse design scene in the international spotlight.
This year's festival featured site-specific installations created by a curated group of locally based as well as internationally renowned architects, designers, and artists. According to D3, they looked for proposals that weren't only bold designs that challenged artistic conventions, but also addressed current global issues in today's society.
Although the event has been done for awhile, many of the works are still in place or are touring within the city.
Scroll down for a peek of the installations.
NERVOUS STRUCTURE
Designers: Cuppetelli and Mendoza
Location: Al Fahidi District, House 16
'Nervous Structure is a site-specific interactive installation consisting of a sculpture composed of vertical and parallel elastic cords that are illuminated with a computer-generated video projection of lines. The motion of these lines is governed by a simulation, which makes them behave like soft ropes. The movements of the viewer influence the lines’ movements by means of a computer that translates physical gesture into virtual force, while the physical cords of the installation remain motionless. The piece revolves around the idea of interface – the point of contact between two different entities: the viewer and the piece itself, the real and the virtual, and between the foreground and background (as the projection creates an interference pattern with the sculpture). Nervous Structure is part of a series of works that investigate ideas of perception and participation through the exploration of the relationships between the physical and the virtual worlds.'
DETRITUS WALL
Designer: Ali Al-Sammarraie
Location: Al Fahidi District, House 16
'Detritus Wall aims to redefine our perception of waste. In a world where vast quantities of leftover wood and cardboard are relegated to rubbish bins with no further use, Al-Sammarraie explores the use of such waste to create different forms, including dynamic furniture pieces and installations that act as sonic and visual barriers. Composed of dozens of reclaimed pieces of cardboard and wood, cut and assembled using CAD software, the objects engender playful interactions with their users and rekindle the overlooked beauty within their materiality. With Detritus Wall, Al-Sammarraie takes what is generally deemed useless and ugly and repurposes as a functional object that is both alluring and sustainable.'
EARTH HIVES
Designers: Latifa Saeed and Talin Hazbar
Location: JBR, Meraas - The Beach
'Thousands of years ago, people discovered that fire had the power to harden earth into a permanent solid form. Such forms served as shelters and were used as containers for seeds, food and water. In fact, terracotta was one of the UAE’s first commodities. Living in the UAE inspired Saeed and Hazbar to explore the craft of pottery, its geometry and the artisanal process of shaping it on a wheel. The outdoor installation Earth Hives is a re-examination of the potter’s craft within the region, redefining the context of terracotta and human interaction with it. Featuring a lighting system embedded within terracotta hemispheres, the beehive cones of Earth Hives juxtapose the primitive, delicate and fragile with Dubai’s urban landscape.'
LOVE PROJECT
Designer: Guto Requena
Location: Dubai Design District (d3), Building 8, G-05
'The Love Project is a study in design, science and technology that captures the emotions people feel when relating personal love stories and transforms them into three-dimensional mandalas. Sensors applied to participants measure their reactions while they tell the defining love story of their own lives. As participants tell their tales privately, data drawn from their changing emotions is relayed to specially developed software. Via a graphic interface, this data moulds every aspect of the mandala, which is then fabricated using a 3D printer. The exhibition site will present real-time projections showing the emotional data collected by the sensors, as well as the physical mandala structures that result.'
FRAGMENTS OF ‘NOW’ – REFLECTIONS OF THE IMMEDIATE PAST
Designer: Yohei Iwaki
Location: Dubai Design District (d3), Building 8, G-05
'Simultaneously, a series of screens acting as mirrors each reflects a different moment of passing time, counting back from ‘now,’ to a few seconds into the past. The existence of ‘now’ is something that we take for granted and rarely examine. Just as we are unconscious of our own body temperatures or breathing, we tend to forget how the current moment is part of a constant flow of time. The shifting reflections of this installation force the observer to question and explore their connection to the present moment.'
LUZ
Designers: Bahar & Sawsan Al Bahar
Location: Al Fahidi District, House 16
'The muqarnas is a form of architectural decoration composed of niche-like, honeycomb shapes, arranged in tiers that cover the undersides of vaults and arches. LUZ, in effect, is a solidified interpretation of the Alhambra muqarnas, transforming an arrangement of spaces into solid shapes through a process of deconstruction. The installation inverts the geometry, materiality and light source of the murqanas to create a collection of pieces in which each represents the physical manifestation of a surface. The regular half-tone pattern of these objects is reconfigured at it transforms into projected light, becoming fluid, organic and ethereal.'
SOUNDWEAVING
Designers: Zsanett Szirmay and Bálint Tárkány-Kovács
Location: Nad Al Sheba, Tashkeel
'Soundweaving turns traditional Hungarian embroidery into music. Holes are laser-cut into fabric strips that serve as bands for a hand-cranked music box, which visitors can manipulate. As the band is fed in, each hole is mechanically converted into a musical note, thus turning heritage textile patterns into melodies. For Dubai Design Week, textile designer Zsanett Szirmay and musical composer Bálint Tárkány-Kovács collaborate with the Fatima Bint Mohammed Initiative to turn their patterns derived from rugs created by Afghan artisans into music.'
UNTITLED (ARCHWAY)
Designer: Anjali Srinivasan
Location: Dubai Design District (d3), Building 8, G-05 - outside
'Untitled (Archway) is a transparent arch built entirely using web-like glass filaments, in real time. The design of the structure is guided by the principles of indeterminate inflorescence – a process of unending growth mimicking the rules that determine the arrangement of flowers on a plant's stem. In biological systems that demonstrate indeterminate inflorescence, there is no true terminal node. Each node is a starting point; the system is mutable, self-supporting and ever expanding. Inspired by such plant systems, Inflorescent also toys with the strength and fragility of glass, thereby pursuing a fine balance between concrete form and ephemeral experience.'
LOT36587
Designer: Raudha Al Ghurair
Location: Dubai Design District (d3), Atrium 5
'Blurring the boundaries between sculpture and science, LOT36587 is a site-specific exploration of the notions of both ‘container’ and ‘contained’. Inspired by the formation of cells and embryos, the installation represents the obsessively repetitive motion of an organic container as it takes over the unoccupied spaces surrounding it.'
DECONSTRUCTING ZONE
Designer: Henrique Stabile, presented by Coletivo Amor de Madre
Location: Al Fahidi District, Courtyard facing House 16
'Deconstructing Zone is an area featuring a series of furniture pieces that can be manipulated to create different final products. Their ultimate forms and uses alter depending on the ways those pieces are assembled, inviting visitors to build and rebuild their own furniture according to their own desires and imagination – for example, why not combine part of a chair and a table to create a garden? Despite its apparent playfulness and whimsy, Deconstructing Zone acts as means of promoting cultural exchange, enhancing urban experience and cultivating personal interactions in city settings. Deconstructing Zone is sponsored by Coletivo Amor de Madre, an initiative that seeks to create exchanges, share information and change our collective mindset by developing and trading works by contemporary designers and artists from diverse regions and cultures around the world.'
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