Abwab is an annually remodeled exhibition dedicated to commissioning work from across the region, uniquely experienced at Dubai Design Week
Abwab is an annually remodeled exhibition dedicated to commissioning work from across the region, uniquely experienced at Dubai Design Week. Curated by Rawan Kashkoush, work is commissioned from across the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia with the purpose of promoting design talent to produce an experience of information exchange, within a dedicated pavilion designed by Architecture + Other Things to represent their community.
Each year the Abwab exhibition is transformed to respond to the changing design climate of the region. In the upcoming fourth edition, Abwab will host a highly curated design exhibition drawn from five communities in the Middle East, consisting of Amman, Beirut, Dubai, the Eastern Provinces of KSA (Pavilion Partner Ithra) and Kuwait City. Two designers are invited from each community to collaborate and produce works related to this year’s theme of the exhibition, which will take place in the heart of Dubai Design District (d3).
Last year, Abwab cast the widest net through an innovative peer-selection process, ‘design dominoes’; whereby in order to be considered to showcase a work, the designer is required to nominate the next designer to submit, a pay-it-forward mechanism. Through this, Abwab tasked itself with building a community across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. 250 designers were reached, 101 submissions were shortlisted into 45 works from 15 countries, and showcased in a bulbous pavilion made up of re-purposed bed-springs, designed by Fahed + Architects.