Dubai Design Week: A new design university and more on the opening day

October 24/16-Cairo City Incomplete. Part of Dubai Design Week. (Photo courtesy-Anya Stafford)

Dubai Design Week returned for its second year this week. As some of the 150 events planned for the week got underway at d3 Design District, the creation of a new university, Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation, was announced. It is a major coup; the first school of its kind in the region, with collaborations from esteemed American universities: Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York’s Parson School of Design.

d3 is the location for much of Dubai Design Week’s bigger events, with pop-up stores, launches, talks, workshops and installations also dotted around the city. ‘Cairo Now! City Incomplete’ crams an astonishing array of creative talent into one space in d3. It is the first time that scores of designers from Cairo have exhibited together. Furniture, posters, fonts, lighting, comic books, clothing and architecture all compete for your attention, evoking this frenetic city’s personality. A must-see.

‘Abwab’ showcases pavilions from Algeria, India, Iraq, Bahrain, Palestine and the UAE. This year’s theme is the Human Senses. Iraqis Rand Abdul Jabbar and Hozan Zangana have dotted model versions of their country’s iconic forms on a landscape of black sand. Each piece has a thought-provoking starting point. Palestine’s pavilion, from Elias and Yousef Anastas, is jaw-droppingly beautiful: a patchwork of olive wood crafted into an arch that throws delicate shadows all around.

The UAE’s offering, from a team of seven including husband and wife Salem and Maryam Al-Qassimi, is lots of fun. Afaaq Al Mustaqbal is a tongue-in-cheek rendition of kitsch Emirati cafe culture, where you can drink karak tea surrounded by wallpaper that is printed with bottles of Al Ain water and Excellence hot sauce. Don’t miss the holograms of spinning fried chicken and lurid smoothies.

The Global Grad Show is also on in d3 this week, with the best of the world’s design students bringing their wonderful and sometimes wacky ideas to fruition. A lot of the products this year focus on improving children’s lives and play, with Panic in The Arctic, an interactive book on electric circuits a standout from London’s Royal College of Art.

Once your circuits have been overloaded, head across the street to Tashkeel’s Tanween pop-up store. It’s a very elegant curation of what exemplary local designers can do, particularly with precious Emirati materials like coral and camel leather. Zuleika Penniman’s Table lamps and Saher Oliver Samman’s Woven - a leather hammock - showcase the best design can hope for: function with really good looks.

The trade fair, Downtown Design starts on Tuesday on the D3 site.

* Dubai Design Week continues until Saturday in venues across the city: www.dubaidesignweek.ae

Anya Stafford is a guest writer for The Art Blog. She has been writing on arts and culture in the Middle East for three years. She's also worked and lectured on communications, arts and technology with the likes of Google and Goldsmiths University London. She is studying for an MFA in Media through the National College of Art and Design, she also holds an MSc in Interactive Digital Media from Trinity College, both from Dublin, Ireland. Find out more about her and read her work at www.anyastafford.com