Arab Designers Crafting their Personal Narrative: Design Doha 2024 Explores Id and Innovation

Rana Beiruti is an unbiased curator primarily based in Amman, Jordan, co-founder and former director of Amman Design Week. Drawing from her architectural background, Beiruti directs her consideration to land-based and social practices inside the area, emphasizing themes corresponding to land, supplies, craftsmanship, and the constructed surroundings. She has curated and designed quite a few up to date design and artwork initiatives, exhibitions, residencies, academic packages, and publications all through the Center East.

Christele Harrouk (ArchDaily): In your opinion, what’s the significance of getting a biennial that focuses totally on design within the Arab world?  

Rana Beiruti: I believe biennials like this are essential moments for designers and creatives to return collectively and have a dialog in a different way. It is a dialog via their work within the exhibition. So what they current is what they wish to say in regards to the situation of Arab design.

I believe it is essential to have a platform within the Arab world made by Arabs, focused at having a dialog with one another slightly than having another person write the story about what Arab design is.

Doha is now actually targeted on constructing a artistic capital within the nation. They’re identified for his or her museums they usually have nice collections. I believe there’s an rising scene of designers in Qatar that’s now searching for this type of publicity and platform. So it is a good time for that in Doha.

Christele Harrouk (ArchDaily): What are you able to inform us about the principle themes of your exhibition? What was the principle transient that you simply initially shared with designers?

Rana Beiruti: The exhibition was actually constructed on dialogues with the designers. As a survey exhibition, I aimed to study their practices and observe their work. I began by mapping sure commonalities between practices throughout the area, from Morocco to the Levant to the Gulf.

I found that the dialog about design invariably begins with the land.

The Arab world boasts a novel geography, local weather, and challenges, which designers have responded to in numerous methods. They’re impressed by it, harvesting supplies from it, and are very aware of the land’s significance.

The exhibition begins with the land, progresses to debate supplies, after which explores the totally different crafts that come up from this understanding of the land and its sources. Moreover, there is a robust revival of custom and historical cultural practices, alongside fashionable cultural practices. The exhibition additionally delves into this wealthy variety inherent within the Arab world.

Usually, we’re perceived as one individuals and one tradition, however in actuality, the Arab world is extremely various, with totally different populations, geographies, and backgrounds. I aimed to showcase this variety inside the exhibition area.

On the second ground, there is a important dialog about designers who embrace know-how and revolutionary strategies of creation, rethinking town, and contemplating how we construct and what cultural objects are utilized in up to date settings within the Arab world. In the direction of the tip of the exhibition, there is a second that celebrates the Arabic language, Arabic tradition, and particular values inherent to Arab identification, corresponding to group, household, and hospitality. The ending of the exhibition goals to evoke that feeling of being at house.

Christele Harrouk (ArchDaily): It is a reflection on our totally different backgrounds and what makes us related, whereas additionally fascinated about the upcoming future. The contributors to the present come from numerous skilled backgrounds. Are you able to inform us about the architects who’ve contributed to this Biennial and spotlight their key interventions?

Rana Beiruti: My curiosity in design stems from an curiosity in craft.

I consider craft is the core of many alternative disciplines, together with artwork, design, and structure. Finally, it includes the manipulation of supplies to type objects. 

This extremely multidisciplinary exhibition begins with a stupendous shifting panorama created by Studio Anne Holtrop, primarily based in Bahrain. It is manufactured from resin immediately forged into the panorama, leading to giant imprints of the terrain which might be movable on mobiles, permitting for interactive engagement. This set up supplies a stupendous backdrop for the exhibition, continuously evolving.

We additionally function AAU Anastas, a apply devoted to researching and creating items from structural stone for the previous decade. Whereas up to date development usually depends on bolstered concrete with stone used merely as cladding, AAU Anastas seeks to revive using stone as a structural materials. They mix conventional stone masonry methods with superior computational and digital fabrication strategies to supply distinctive buildings. Their studio serves as a analysis hub, and the items they create are notably distinctive, particularly inside the context of Palestine, the place the dialogue in regards to the land holds important significance.

Bricklab operates as a extremely research-based studio, specializing in reviving not historical traditions, however slightly modernist design, notably industrial glassmaking. They collaborated with 6 a.m. Glass, primarily based in Italy, explores industrial glass panels that had been as soon as prevalent within the Gulf. Their consequence was a stupendous glass column, recreating the glass panels of the previous.

Civil Structure’s contribution featured an enormous roof construction within the area. Initially proposed for a guardian majlis, a mission that was by no means realized, they determined to showcase a 1-to-1 mannequin of the constructing for the exhibition. It’s exactly as it will have been if it had been constructed. The displayed furnishings beneath mimics the inside format of the proposed home, together with a mattress, salon, and toilet. This piece raises intriguing questions on structure. It is an structure with out partitions. Nonetheless, while you’re beneath it, you do really feel such as you’re someway in an area inside the area, inside the bigger exhibition space.

Salima Naji, an anthropologist, has devoted her life and apply to preserving, revitalizing, and rehabilitating rural structure in Morocco. Within the context of a recent design biennial, it was essential to focus on up to date design inside rural settings. Salima’s distinctive contribution concerned flying to Qatar together with her workforce of grasp builders and artisans to assemble your entire pavilion utilizing Adobe. This marked her first expertise working with the soil, and collaborating with Qatari Adobe makers. The mission exemplifies the shared heritage throughout the area, sourcing all supplies regionally to construct the piece on-site.

Hiba Shahzada is a Jordanian architect and artist, also called a painter. Her contribution is a fountain pavilion, showcasing a novel water function. What’s fascinating is that the roof seems disjointed from the columns, creating an phantasm. Whereas it looks as if the columns help the roof, they’re separated. For me, this piece is especially placing as a result of the ingredient of water creates a second of tranquility and reflection inside the exhibition area. Water holds important symbolism in Islamic tradition, usually related to data. The typology of water fountains within the Arab world is deeply rooted, and Hiba incorporates stunning Islamic geometry within the roof design, which is mirrored within the pool. There is a fascinating concord to it.

Christele Harrouk (ArchDaily): Lastly, what does it imply to create within the area right now?

Rana Beiruti: I consider the exhibition supplies a solution to that query. Nonetheless, what I discover most enriching is the designers’ deep connection to the land and supplies. They’re fascinated about their identification, and cultural heritage, and are rooted prior to now, but they’re additionally forward-thinking and embrace the long run. They’re all engaged in constructing a greater world, distinct from consumerism and mainstream worldwide design traits.

Fascinatingly, they’re writing their narrative.

Alongside Arab Design Now, commissioned public artworks, occasions, and panel shows, this new Qatar Museums’ biennial is internet hosting 5 further exhibitions: Colours of the Metropolis: A Century of Structure in Doha, Weaving Poems, 100/100 HUNDRED BEST ARABIC POSTERS Spherical 04, and Cultural Kinship. The 2024 version additionally chosen winners for the Design Doha Prize, in 4 totally different classes. Established to supply help for distinctive designers, the prize acknowledged the works of Fabraca Studios (Lebanon) in Product Design, Fadaa (Jordan) in Inside Design, Sayar & Garibeh (Lebanon) in Furnishings Design, and Abeer Seikaly (Jordan) in Craft.