Photo by Warda Malik/The Gazelle
Dubai Bursts with Design and Innovation
This last week of October, Dubai was booming with innovation and technology. The Dubai Design District, also known as d3, held the inaugural Dubai ...
Nov 7, 2015
This last week of October, Dubai was booming with innovation and technology. The Dubai Design District, also known as d3, held the inaugural Dubai Design Week and offered a multitude of events, projects and activities all dedicated to the concepts of design.
The week was organized in order to encourage the growth of the design industry in the Emirate and to celebrate milestones in this field, both regionally and internationally.
It featured local designers such as Zeinab Alheshemi, an Emirati conceptual artist who makes sculptures inspired by traditional dhow boats.
One of the events of the Design Week was the Global Grad Show, an exhibition of the most innovative projects from the world’s leading design schools.
Participating universities included the Royal College of Art, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Tsinghua University. The show went beyond featuring decor or art that focused solely on the aesthetic; its concerns also spanned the fields of health, construction and the workforce.
Featured innovations included everything from an energy-saving project that uses UV light to sterilize medical equipment to an online platform that rethinks how people write their wills.
The Grad Show also featured an exhibition, Iconic City: Brilliant Beirut, which tracked the development of design movements in the context of Beirut's diverse population and history of civil war.
NYU Abu Dhabi organized a group of students to attend the Design Week for the particular purpose of seeing the Grad Show.
Freshman David Curcubet described his experience as exciting.
“It was interesting to get an insight into the design trends and to realize that the gist of design ideas remains the same in different parts of the world,” said Curcubet.
He also noticed similar patterns between the objects on display, adding that many of the design schools seemed to focus on innovations in smart furniture and clothes.
“I strongly feel that NYUAD should participate in the show, especially knowing that the design trends are focusing on many global issues, like medical research and sustainable architecture,” added Curcubet.
NYUAD does not currently offer majors specifically geared towards design, though there are several relevant theory, digital and practical classes like the Design and Innovation January Term course, which asks students to engineer prototypes of new products.
“NYUAD teams could definitely represent meaningful developments and, hence, uphold the image of a leading college focusing on technological advances in the UAE," added Curcubet.
Warda Malik is deputy news editor. Email her at feedback@thegazelle.org.
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