Design Days Dubai may be one of the most exclusive design fairs in the world, but there is more to it than celebrating limited edition design pieces that could burn a deep hole in your pocket. Every year, it introduces us to a new generation of designers, as it announces winners of the design competitions, Urban Commissions and Van Cleef & Arpels Middle East Emergent Designer Awards.
A design initiative launched by Dubai Culture & Arts Authority and Dubai Design District (d3) in 2014 to celebrate the UAE’s growing design-conscious urban development, Urban Commissions mandate is to cultivate design works that engage with the local design community and product industries. Last year, architect Anna Szonyi reigned over 128 exceptional entries with IDO, a 3.6m long bench comprising 73 boomerang-shaped pieces of solid Burma teak wood which rotate to create innumerable seating forms. The bench has since been the highlight of the open courtyard in Hai d3.
For its second edition, the judges were looking for a unique public shelter design that would double as a communal hub at d3. UAE born and raised Hinjal Kumar, a final year Architecture student at American University of Sharjah who had the unique distinction of being the only student in the top 10 finalists took home the prize with her entry, Bike d3. A spiral take on a slatted bicycle storage system, Bike d3 works as much as a parking station as it is a shaded nook.
“I hope Bike d3 can influence a change of lifestyle,” says Kumar, an earlier winner of the Shaikha Manal’s Young Artist Award in the Fine Arts category. “I hope it encourages organic networking within our urban fabric.”
Last year, Van Cleef & Arpels Middle East Emergent Designer Prize introduced us to Ivan Parati, who along with his partner Emanuela Corti, went on to win the Grand Prix at the 2015 Lexus Design Award with their project Sense-Wear. Parati’s winning entry, an ever-changing table composed of smaller sections, was the designer’s commentary on our social structure, highlighting our need to support each other for the larger good of humanity.
For the competition’s 2016 edition, Van Cleef & Arpels set the theme of nature. Designers were asked to work with natural materials and forms that are indigenous to their immediate surroundings to create objects that served a functional purpose suited to a contemporary lifestyle. Influences from nature in both materials and structure were key.
This year’s finalists included Michael Rice. A ceramics specialists and an associate professor of studio art at the American University of Dubai, his entry was a crystal bowl inspired by a spectrum of natural spiral forms found in shells, DNA helix and sand ripples. Dubai-based Anjali Srinivasan, one of the winners of Swarovski Designers of the Future 2016 award proposed a visual experience. Her entry, the Vehicular Lens was an amalgamation of three local, nature-based inspirations: a flower pod, sand and light. “I proposed to make a cycle rickshaw whose passenger carriage was a pod inspired by a desert flower and made of optical glass lens fabric” she says. The result transparent inhabitable space whose structure emulates the compound vision of a fly. “The idea was to alter the way people see and engage with their surroundings as they take a ride in the rickshaw.”
Ranim Oruock heeded to the competition’s theme with her effervescent multi-use lighting piece that captured the beauty of a school of jellyfish in motion. Glow, her award winning entry combined traditional glassblowing techniques with the advanced digital fabrication of 3D printing and modern lighting technology. Curved acrylic tentacles resembling the legs of a jellyfish were fused with 3D printed glass globes which when lit emanated the radiance of its muse.
“As an Architect, winning this prestigious award will expose me to diverse design communities, subsequently adding to one’s creative thinking which is essential for any Architect” says Oruock.
In addition to realising her vision, Oruock received an opportunity to learn the crafts behind haute jewellery and watchmaking with a 5-day trip to Paris to attend courses at the L’Ecole Van Cleef & Arpels. “Besides being an Architect, I also design jewellery. I spent the past couple of years exploring jewellery making techniques and materials” says the winner. “Getting the chance to attend workshops at the L’Ecole Van Cleef & Arpels would be a big step towards pursuing my passion for jewellery making.”
- Pratyush Sarup is design manager at one of the UAE’s premium interiors firms.
