A major Dubai Design Week initiative, Abwab, which means ‘doors’ in Arabic, is a series of six architecturally designed pavilions that will showcase the work of the most exciting designers, studios and curators from six different countries in the MENASA region.
A major Dubai Design Week initiative, Abwab, which means ‘doors’ in Arabic, is a series of six architecturally designed pavilions that will showcase the work of the most exciting designers, studios and curators from six different countries in the MENASA region.
Under the theme of Games: The Element of Play in Culture, Abwab will celebrate the MENASA region’s diverse creative thinking.
Reveling in the imagination that drives childhood play, a freedom often sent adrift as game makers enter adulthood, the Jordan pavilion draws on the swing, or ‘murjeiha’ to evoke memories of its designers’ childhood play in the country.
The pavilion is curated by Arini Creative Platforms, a non-profit institution promoting design, architecture and urbanism, founded by Mohammad Aljabi, Heba Najada and Liyan Jabi. Here the team reveals the inspiration behind their pavilion.
“When it was playtime, the game that everybody knew how to play was our very own imagination. Imagination fuelled us with the limitless abilities to create new worlds, change our environments and explore alternative realities.
The magnifying and augmentative imaginative powers took simple or mundane things from around us to transform them into objects and situations far more or bigger than what they are. It was so easy for us to live alternative realities.
With all these in mind, the swing, or ‘murjeiha’, made complete sense to be the starting point of our design. We believe it to be the optimum representation of our collective childhood as Jordanian designers.”
Jordan’s team will explore paradoxes as a base for the design of a new ‘murjeiha’ - imagination versus reality; mental versus physical power; visibility versus invisibility; and mindfulness versus mindlessness, among others. The designers participating in the Jordan pavilion are: Dina Haddadin, Omar Al-Zo’bi, Rula Yaghmour and Rand El Haj Hasan.