The tubular chandeliers in Nasir Alghawi’s Al Nawa Collection radiate with an unusual, captivating texture. Several visitors to the Tanween by Tashkeel booth at Downtown Design approach the designer, curious about what the piece is made of. When he tells them, they squint in disbelief at the coppery light. Some, when they think no one is looking, diffidently reach out to touch the material.
The piece is assembled from more than 48,000 date pits, each filed by hand into rectangles. “I visit date factories,” he says. “That’s where I source them. The material is extremely rigid and has a lot of potential.”
He picks one from a bowl in the centre of a table beneath the chandelier. The tabletop is also made of date pits, its base constructed from the shavings left behind as the seeds were filed.
Alghawi is one of the many UAE creatives exhibiting at Downtown Design this year. The event, a centrepiece of Dubai Design Week, has been steadily expanding its international reach. Home-grown creativity, however, remains its most captivating element.
Several booths are showcasing local designs. There are staples, such as Tanween by Tashkeel, which has been exhibiting steadily for the past few years.
Since its inception in 2013, the programme has offered emerging designers a platform to share their work. Often, they are at the cutting edge of trends and reimagine familiar cultural elements.
Amna Al Shamsi and Hannaneh Rafiee, for instance, draw inspiration from the region’s pearling tradition. Their chair, Al Ghawas, meaning “the diver”, incorporates motifs that allude to that history.
“With the form, we wanted to mimic how pearl diving ships would float on water,” Rafiee says, gesturing towards the floating backrest design. “At the same time, we wanted to highlight what is the most important thing about the chair, and that’s the pearl designs beneath.”
While pearl diving ships would traditionally be constructed out of the teak, the designers opted to use oak instead. “We chose to be sustainable,” Al Shamsi says. “We wanted to use what’s available. We then chose to use this dark red fabric for the cushions because pearls would usually be housed in these dark red pouches.”
Reem Shawkat and Alefiyah Ustad, founders of Clock and Cloud Studio, use one of the most available materials in the UAE. Their Loodo table is constructed out of rings of hardened desert sand, made vibrant using natural dyes such as turmeric, indigo, charcoal and henna.
“We've worked with sand before, so we're comfortable with it,” Ustad says. “We decided to use desert sand. The binder is also all natural and is a by-product of milk.”
Jasim Alnaqbi took design cues from a family heirloom, a gold bangle that belonged to his grandmother, to create a jewellery cabinet.
“She gave it to my mother, who in turn, gave it to my sister,” Alnaqbi says. “This continual rebirth of a piece was very interesting to me. I wanted to analyse its motifs.
“Coming from a graphic design background, I wanted to create a piece using just one shape, the circle. It is very prominent in jewellery-making.”
Moustafa Zakaria also drew inspiration from the circle, producing a rocking chair made from 63 interlocking parts based on the same radius arc – a traditional method found in Islamic art.
“The geometric designs have an underlying hidden grid that's made up of circles of the same diameter,” Zakaria says. “Hence, the chair may look complex, but it’s actually complexity derived from a single circle. It was a lot of fun arriving at this.”
The chair invites multiple ways of sitting. Users can lounge across it from the side or lie back along its length. A section juts from the back, allowing a second person to sit at the same time.
While the chair is chiefly made of birch plywood, Zakaria used a different wood for the veneer. “It's laminated on both sides with bog oak. It is basically an oak tree that was felled naturally centuries ago and got buried in a bog, so it undergoes a state of pre-fossilisation, and that’s what gives it this unique texture,” he says, of the charcoal-coloured woodgrain.
Zakaria is part of this year’s Athath Fellowship cohort. An initiative by the Abu Dhabi creative community Make, the fellowship is an intensive 15-week programme dedicated to professional furniture design and prototyping.
Moufida Mohideen is another Athath participant presenting at Downtown Design. Her Zelo Table incorporates design elements from the Art Deco movement.
“As a designer, I was always inspired by things that acted like a magnet, that brought people together,” she says. “I’ve also always wanted to explore woodworking.”
Mohideen says she had previously worked with wood, but Zelo Table was the first time she exclusively used the material. She opted to leave her red oak unstained, and juxtaposed it with blue maple blur veneer. “I was inspired by the Art Deco movement in general,” she says.
With Rasma, Yara Shaban revisits the furniture piece that inspired her journey into architecture. The drafting table, crafted from red oak, has sharply defined angles and an adjustable top. Its drawers and handles lined with camel leather offer a tactile contrast. “I was really inspired by midcentury modern design,” she says. “It has strong angular features and you can really see the raw materials. I kept everything honest.”
Several other booths are showcasing local designs. The UAE Designers Exhibitions returns with acclaimed Lebanese designer Nada Debs mentoring its exhibitors. Meanwhile, Sharjah’s 1971 Design Space spotlights Nuhayr Zein and Lina Ghalib, two designers who draw from the UAE’s landscape to craft contemporary forms using seed pods and palm fronds.
Downtown Design runs at d3 in Dubai until November 9
