Emiratis are designing for the future – but with an eye on the past

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Mar 25, 2014 - Designers Kieren Jones (right) and Kholoud pose for a portrait at their office in Karama. They have been working on one of Kholoud's ideas for a new prototype product that is being produced as part of the TCA UAE Young Designer Programme. ( Jaime Puebla / The National Newspaper ) Nick Leech - Review
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For designers, inspiration can come at any time and in any place. Typically, the creative process starts with a drawing, but when Kholoud Sharafi welcomed ­Kieren Jones into her Dubai studio, it wasn't pen and paper the designers reached for, it was food.
Sharafi presented Jones, a Welshman on his first visit to the UAE, with a display of traditional Emirati hospitality and a meal – eaten on the studio floor – of salted fish maleh biryani, chicken saluna and prawn biryani. All of Sharafi's colleagues were invited.
"I wanted Kieren to experience the traditional way of dining so that he could get an understanding of my way of thinking and my approach," explains Sharafi. "I'm interested in the evolution of dining culture but that's all I can tell you at the moment!"
Sharafi is one of three Emirati designers who have been selected for the inaugural Abu Dhabi Art UAE Designer Programme, a year-long initiative that was launched by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (TCA) at the capital's art fair last year. Sharafi and her fellow nominees Aljoud Lootah and Mohammed Abedin have been charged with developing a brand-new product that engages in some way with traditional Emirati crafts. Jones is the UK-based designer who has been selected by the British Council, TCA's partner in the initiative, to act as the guide who will help the designers turn their basic concepts into prototype product designs.
"Each of the designers is concerned with the future design context, but in a slightly different way," explains Jones. "They've called me a mentor, but I think my role falls somewhere between that and a curator. I think my job is to be quite critical – in a positive way – and to stand back and try to contextualise the projects. "
Jones has form when it comes to pushing designs and designers to their imaginative and material limits. The designer, who now teaches a course called Material Futures at the University of Arts in London, first came to the attention of the British Council in 2006 with an exhibition, Flat-packed Re-arranged. In it, Jones "hacked" familiar products from IKEA and re-imagined them as stags' heads, sleds and crossbows that fired IKEA pencils. The project set the course for Jones's subsequent career in which, rather than focusing on the physical outputs of design, he has considered questions of what he describes as "social sustainability", community values and the creative use of materials.
In 2012, Jones collaborated with Studio Swine on Sea Chair, a project that investigated the growing problem of waste in the ocean by converting a retired fishing boat into a floating furniture factory that trawled the ocean for plastic rather than fish.
A year later, Jones sought to harness the destructive power of volcanic eruptions with his Volcano Project, a proposal for emergency accommodation for displaced communities that made use of the same lava that had made the communities homeless in the first place.
At first sight, there seems to be little or no connection between Jones's practice, traditional Emirati crafts, and the kind of output produced by Tinkah, the multi-disciplinary design studio Sharafi established with her colleagues Reem Al Ghaith, Abeer Tahlak and Joshua Cox in 2012.
Tinkah's first project was a Downtown Dubai iPhone application developed for Emaar Technologies and one of its more recent was Happiest Day, an advertising and social media campaign for the UAE's 42nd National Day celebrations that included advertising, branding, multi-media and exhibition design.
In Jones, however, Sharafi sees a a kindred spirit and is looking forward to their collaboration.
"The way that Kieren thinks is very similar to the way that we think," the Tinkah founder explains. "Dubai wants everything to be finished yesterday and very few people understand the process of design.
"When Kieren came back to me and said: 'You don't have to run like you always do. Take a step back and take your time', I was kind of relieved."
Jones is also using his early meetings with the Emirati designers in his charge as an opportunity for research.
"I don't see this as a styling exercise or as a simple matter of reinterpreting a traditional craft. I've visited artisans to really try to familiarise myself with the crafts so that I can understand them, because I think there's a lot more to be learnt from the process of how things are actually made.
"Then, when the designers come to London, I'll take them to see young contemporary designers there who have also had contact with traditional artisans and industries. It's almost a collaboration between the two countries."
While Sharafi is looking forward to her trip to the UK, what excites her most about the TCA programme are the opportunities she hopes it will provide locally.
"Product design is a new thing in the UAE and the process of producing is not easy here," she explains. "We've really struggled to find the right people to help us produce products in the UAE so I'm looking forward – with the help of TCA and Kieren – to finding the people who can help us. At the moment we have to outsource everything."
Sharafi looks forward to the day when local designers have access to the same amount of materials, resources and information as those working elsewhere. She is also driven by a desire to develop authentic local design.
"I still feel that our voice – in terms of design – is not spoken yet. If I look at Dutch or Lebanese design it is easy to recognise. Even Kuwaiti design is starting to evolve, but UAE design is still some way off. The language is not spoken yet, but part of our mission is to try and develop it. To see what that language is."
Nick Leech is a features writer at The National.
nleech@thenational.ae