The school is being developed in collaboration with MIT and Parsons and will help foster the most creative minds in the region (and the world).

Dubai Design Week started yesterday, and to kick things off in style, the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation was announced. The new world-class design and innovation school will open in the d3 area near Downtown Dubai by 2018.

Here’s a video that shows what the building will look like, inside and out:

The world-class university will be developed in collaboration with the Parsons School of Design and globally-renowned American university MIT. Those are some prestigious friends: both schools were ranked in the top five of Quacquarelli Symonds’ 2016 global art and design schools ranking.

Developing design minds in the emirate will allow Dubai to “begin exporting to the world in a different way,” explains Emirati artist Mattar bin Lahej, “with greater innovation and better quality.”

The school will focus on modern technology and the latest, cutting-edge design styles and research. It will integrate a scientific mindset in a way that’s not done at many design schools today.

It will explore “how to consider design as an industry, and in the context of business and not only as a standalone creative endeavour,” explains Ali Jaber, who is a board member on the Dubai Design & Fashion Council.

Here’s more on what the school aims to achieve:

The programme and curriculum will be flexible, allowing students to design their own four-year journey, which will culminate in the region’s first Bachelor of Design degree with cross concentrations in Product Design, Strategic Design Management, Media, Visual Art and Fashion Design.

The campus has been designed by Foster + Partners (yes, as in Norman Foster of the gherkin and Index tower) and has been laid out to act like one big huge interactive ‘studio’, enable collaboration between different design disciplines.

“Design plays a key role in today’s global economy, and it’s exciting to see the burgeoning talent of design students in the Middle East,” said Joel Towers, Executive Dean, Parsons School of Design of the new school. “International collaboration strengthens the future of design and leads to creative and innovative ideas. We are pleased to be working with Dubai to develop DIDI as a way to inspire students and cultivate new approaches to design.”

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