Dubai Design Week: A week of makers and makers’ work

If you’ve lived in Dubai long enough, you know how the design crowd rolls. Architects, creative thinkers, object nerds, interiors obsessives, the kind of people who get excited about a chair leg, a sculptural art piece, or the texture of handwoven fabric. Once a year, they all show up for the same thing: Dubai Design Week.

Now in its 11th edition, the region’s leading design festival returns from November 4 to 9, taking over Dubai Design District (d3) with exhibitions, installations, talks, markets and more. This is where you see creatives at play – sketching, building, installing, and thinking out loud – at one of the city’s best weeks for inspiration.

The fair

 

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Anchoring the week is Downtown Design (November 4–9), the Middle East’s leading design fair. Expect a curated mix of international and regional studios showing furniture, lighting, textiles, objects and more.

The talks

The Forum at Downtown Design is always a highlight. This year’s speaker line-up includes Tom Dixon (in his Dubai debut), Lee Broom, and Isabelle Stanislas, all bringing perspective on what’s now and what’s next in global design.

The commissions

Public art and design installations give the festival its street-level energy. The annual design competition Urban Commissions returns with this year’s winning project, When Does a Threshold Become a Courtyard?, by UAE-based design and research studio Some Kind of Practice, founded by Omar Darwish and Abdulla Abbas. Their work explores the line between public and private space through research and collaboration.

The headline commission, Abwab, invites practitioners to explore the theme In the Details, focusing on material intelligence, precision and cultural nuance through ornamentalism, an aesthetic language that shapes architecture, objects and textiles across cultures.

The collectibles

Editions brings together limited-edition works across ceramics, photography, paper, and design. It’s quieter, more intimate, and always full of finds.

For more info, visit @dubaidesignweek | dubaidesignweek.ae

Images: Dubai Design Week instagram