Starts today, until 17 November, the Dubai Design Week, one of the most important and eagerly awaited design events in the Middle East. Exhibitions, events, talks and meetings will make Dubai the nerve centre of Arab design for a week with 175 brands and more than 60,000 visitors from all over the world ready to attend the fourth edition directed by William Knight. An important appointment for both local and foreign companies and designers who want to approach the Middle East market.
The event, organised at the Dubai Design District (d3), includes over 230 events, the most important of which are Le French Design, From Rak to Drak, The Original Comes From Vitra and Design+Making UAE.
Opportunities also for emerging talents to present their projects: an example is Abwab ('doors', in Arabic), an exhibition presenting the work of 155 designers from Amman, Beirut, Dubai, the Provinces of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait City within five pavilions designed by Architecture + Other Things, or by UAE Design Stories: The Next Generation from The Emiratesan exhibition curated by product designer Khalid Shafar that will chronicle the work of some of the UAE's most influential designers.
Another major exhibition will be ProtoPiecesin which the work of 12 students from the College of Architecture Art and Design (CAAD) of the American University in the city of Sharjah will be presented.
Of particular importance will also be the Downtown Design (13 to 17 November), which will host almost two hundred international companies as well as twenty-five meetings with the most influential personalities in contemporary design, such as Paola Navone, Marc Ange, Matthew McCormick and Martyn Lawrence Bullard, and the Audi Innovation Talks lecture series.
Italian companies exhibiting their works include Cassina, Diesel Living, Cappellini, Artemide, Barovier&Toso, Foscarini and Abet laminati (with an installation by Paola Navone).
This year's theme will be Livable Citieswhich will aim to reflect on the liveability of today's cities and metropolises. Also with this in mind, there will be the Global Grad Show, with the presentation of 150 projects dedicated to the interaction between design and technology from some of the world's best universities.
Another new feature of the fourth edition will be Downtown editions, an area dedicated to capsule collections, bespoke design and designer collaborations, in which the design weeks of Amman, Beirut and Casablanca collaborated with some of their brightest talents.
La Dubai Design Week will also be the occasion for the presentation of some prizes: on 13 November, in fact, the winners of the competition will be presented Urban Commissions 4.0aimed at designers from the United Arab Emirates and promoted by Dubai Design Week, Dubai Culture & Arts Authority (DCAA) and Dubai Design District (d3), as well as by theAudi Innovation Awardwhich this year will be awarded to the project that has best interpreted the theme 'Connections'.
Finally, some major events will accompany the Dubai Design Week: the opening of the Jameel Arts CentreDubai's first contemporary art museum, the Fikra Graphic Design Biennial city of Sharjah, the first biennial of its kind in the region, and a series of meetings at the Alserkal Avenuethe city's artistic quarter.
