As the largest design event in Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, Dubai Design Week celebrates the region’s diverse creative thinking through its exhibitions ‘Abwab’ and ‘Iconic City’. This year’s Abwab returns revised as a contemporary snapshot of products and designers from across the region; Iconic City shines a spotlight on the design culture of Casablanca, Morocco.
As the largest design event in Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, Dubai Design Week celebrates the region’s diverse creative thinking through its exhibitions ‘Abwab’ and ‘Iconic City’. This year’s Abwab returns revised as a contemporary snapshot of products and designers from across the region; Iconic City shines a spotlight on the design culture of Casablanca, Morocco.
Named after the Arabic word for ‘doors’, Abwab remains one of the key components of Dubai Design Week, dedicated to taking visitors on a design journey across the region and promoting its creative talent.
Abwab returns for 2017 with a revised format moving away from installation-based conceptual work to present a curated and styled exhibition focusing on product design from across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
Abwab will provide an insight into techniques, materials and craft and, as in previous editions, will be housed within a temporary pavilion structure built into the walkways of d3; designed by a UAE-based architectural practice and fabricated from recycled waste.
Previous editions of Abwab have generated never-before-seen design content under one unifying theme from curatorial and design teams from Algeria, Bahrain, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE.
Iconic City is a Dubai Design Week series; an annual exhibition launched in 2015 that explores the culture and design scene of individual cities within the Middle East. Its previous editions took Dubai Design Week visitors by storm: the graphic-led ‘Brilliant Beirut’ exhibition (2015) curated by Rana Salam, and the multidisciplinary ‘Cairo Now! A City Incomplete’ (2016) curated by Mohamed Elshahed.
Iconic City is a research-led exhibition and pop-up, premiered in Dubai aimed at bringing to life the people and pulse that makes each creative city in the region unique. For 2017, Design Week shines a spotlight on Casablanca, Morocco, one of the most important creative hubs in North Africa.
Rawan Kashkoush, Head of Programming said: “the complexity of the region has bred designers with one foot in history and the other in an inter-connected future. Nowhere else in the world are these diverse curators and creatives coming together in this capacity, through Iconic City and Abwab we can experience the paths they pave.”
More information on both exhibitions will be unveiled in the coming months.