Once Upon a Forest / OBMI. Image Courtesy of Dubai Design Week
One of the most significant cultural events in the Middle East, Dubai Design Week represents a platform that offers individuals and companies the opportunity to showcase their design experience and to open conversations about the most pressing issues of our times. Developed in a strategic partnership with Dubai Design District (d3), the event presents a series of immersive, large-scale installations that highlight the festival’s theme: Design with Impact.
This year’s program is focused on designing a sustainable future. To promote this, Dubai Design Week has invited international and regional architects and designers to create installations that demonstrate creative design thinking, to introduce innovative materials, and spark conversations about the ways in which design can have a positive impact on the environment.
Applications are now open for Dubai Design Week in the United Arab Emirates. Applicants are encouraged to submit ideas and proposals to host an event, showcase a product or stage a creative project during the region’s largest creative festival. Much of Dubai Design Week’s program is made up of partner events and activities, held both at Dubai Design District and at locations across the city and the UAE.
From Barcelona to Bejing, Marc Goodwin is capturing architectural workspaces around the world. Goodwin’s latest endeavor: Dubai. Scroll down to get a glimpse of where architects like the ones at RMJM and EDGE work in the “City of Gold.”
A commitment to the environment is at the core of Fahed + Architects philosophy, so it was necessary to create a structure out of 100% recyclable material from the local waste management company, Bee’ah. The outer skin of the pavilion is a mesh of entwined bedsprings that naturally lends itself to an organic form, floating amongst the surrounding buildings.
Dubai Design District (d3) has announced the opening of offices by 4 of the world’s leading architecture firms – Zaha Hadid Architects, Santiago Calatrava Architects & Engineers, Foster + Partners and Benoy – marking another step towards the city’s goal of becoming a global design hub.
Since first launching in April 2013, d3 has become the region’s preeminent destination for artists, designers and creative types of all kinds to work and collaborate. So far, d3 has welcomed in over 30 architecture firms of medium to large size, including SSH and Viktor Udzenija, RMJM and Wanders Wagner.
London-based architecture firm Foster + Partners has designed a central community space for the district, due to be completed in 2018. Image Courtesy of Dubai Design Week
In recent years, it's been no secret that Dubai has been attempting to diversify its industries, as the city moves on from being an oil-based economy. In this article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Dubai: Making a Creative Capital from Scratch," Ali Morris investigates how the city is building its own design district to rival London or New York - and doing so despite starting from almost nothing.
In cities where a faded industrial area exists, a creative community often follows. It’s a well-established cycle of urban regeneration that has played out in Berlin, London, and New York. Attracted by cheap rent and large, empty spaces, the creatives come, building up areas with independent cafés and stores before inevitably being priced out of the market by the very gentrification they helped to bring about.
So what happens in a city so young that it doesn’t have a dilapidated area for the creatives to occupy? When the city in question is Dubai, which was still just a desert fishing settlement until around the 1960s, you build it from scratch, of course. With the second part of a three-phase build unveiled last year, Dubai Design District (known as d3) is a sprawling 15.5-million-square-foot (1.4 million square meter) development located in a desert plot on the eastern edge of the city. Circled by multilane highways and located between downtown Dubai and a wildlife reserve, d3 has been masterminded as a framework from which to grow and sustain a new design ecosystem.
The Dubai Design District (d3) has tapped Foster + Partners to design its masterplan's second phase. Spanning one million-square-feet, the new development will be a "Creative Community" that will serve as a "thriving cultural epicenter" within d3, and an "incubator" for emerging designers an artists.
“This is an exciting initiative, which supports young creatives, and allows Dubai’s design scene to flourish from within," says Gerard Evenden, Studio Head at Foster + Partners.
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.jpg?1460552272 "Ali Al-Sammarraie assembled his \"Detritus Wall\" installation using refuse cardboard and wood. Image Courtesy of Dubai Design Week")
.jpg?1460552021 "The Dubai Design District (d3) is planned as a creative neighborhood within reach of the city’s downtown. Image Courtesy of Dubai Design Week")
.jpg?1460552010 "One of the installations constructed by local designers for the inaugural Dubai Design Week in 2015, \"Yaroof\" by Aljoud Lootah references the traditional form of fishing in the area. Nylon ropes strung on octagonal frames also call to mind arabesque motifs. Image Courtesy of Dubai Design Week")
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