Every year Abwab has brought together and highlighted some of the most promising regional talents and their works at Dubai Design Week. For its 2020 edition, the commission has been awarded to Iraqi designer Hozan Zangana for his proposal ‘Fata Morgana’, responding to Dubai Design Week’s theme of redefining and reimagining the way we live in an urban environment.
To be placed at the heart of Dubai Design District (d3) during Dubai Design Week, 9-14 November 2020, the conceptual ‘Fata Morgana’ – meaning a complex form of superior mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon - presents a notional framework for a modern-day city through an open-plan arrangement of seating components around a central origin point which will aim to amplify the necessity to cross each other’s paths by presenting this pivotal intersection, demanding for interaction between people and reactivating the connection with each other on a social level.
The various components include pillars, symbolic for each of the seven Emirates, paying homage to the UAE while offering strong research on regionally contextual materials and production processes, structurally adapting to today’s requirement for physical distancing in its entirety.
As a nod to historical construction methods used across the Middle East, a rammed earth technique will be used in the build the different elements of the pavilion, (re)connecting culture, history and people in a public space.