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Amman Design Week 2019: Possibilities
Amman Design Week returns with large-scale exhibitions and the biggest program yet, transforming the event into a year-round platform for learning and exchange. Alongside the Hangar Exhibition, this edition features new thematic exhibitions in material research, urban agriculture, graphic design and epigraphy, and crafts.
2019 THEME: Possibilities
Design is often cited as a discipline that has the potential to solve many of the world’s problems, with designers assigned the vast responsibility of refining and improving every aspect of our daily lives. With a future that is unpredictable and unclear, the question often becomes ‘what can design do for ----(refugees, the environment, water, food)---?’.
In the world of design, new ideas are germinating, and the understanding and expectations of design are being redefined and reassessed.
In 2019, we are looking at design as a catalyst for dreaming; the act of imagining what can be different from the way it is today, and moving towards it. We are shifting the conversation from the reactive act of problem-solving to the bridging of dreams and reality.
We invite designers to engage with us in a process of re-imagination, both of who we are, but also of what we can do, and the future we can deliver through design. We hope to collectively embark on a journey of discovery – to leave behind what is, and imagine what could be.
Possibilities is a celebration of the fictional, incomplete, and unsolved. It invites the creation of scenarios and storytelling, narrations by the makers through the act of making. In the spirit of speculative design, it is more about asking questions than finding the answers.
We are not in search of one all-inclusive utopia, but a celebration of the plurality of all that is possible; the many utopias that can be created by the mind that uses design as a tool for reinterpreting possible pasts, redesigning possible presents, and reimagining possible futures.
PROGRAM:
Design is often cited as a discipline that has the potential to solve many of the world’s problems, with designers assigned the vast responsibility of refining and improving every aspect of our daily lives. With a future that is unpredictable and unclear, the question often becomes ‘what can design do for ----(refugees, the environment, water, food)---?’.
In the world of design, new ideas are germinating, and the understanding and expectations of design are being redefined and reassessed.
In 2019, we are looking at design as a catalyst for dreaming; the act of imagining what can be different from the way it is today, and moving towards it. We are shifting the conversation from the reactive act of problem-solving to the bridging of dreams and reality.
We invite designers to engage with us in a process of re-imagination, both of who we are, but also of what we can do, and the future we can deliver through design. We hope to collectively embark on a journey of discovery – to leave behind what is, and imagine what could be.
The Hangar Exhibition
The Hangar exhibition, curated by Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop.
The 2019 Hangar Exhibition is as much about creation and authorship as it is about revealing connections and commonalities amongst designers, in an effort to draw a map of shared interests and potential synergies across the Arab World. The resulting itinerary develops around four emerging themes: material research, territorial explorations, narratives of the city, and weaving.
The Crafts District
Tucked away in a hidden corner of Jabal Amman, the Kabariti Village is a private property owned by the Kabariti Family. It is a compound of old residential buildings, heritage homes, and gardens located off of Omar Bin Al Khattab Street and built in the 1930s. Sparsely visited by the public since its renovation in 2011, and unoccupied since 2008, the Kabariti Village will be open to the public during Amman Design Week 2019, where it will host the Crafts District exhibitions and showcases, thanks to a generous donation by the Kabariti family.
Arini –– Nīla Canopy, 2019.
At the entrance of the Crafts District 2019 is the Nīla Canopy, designed and conceived by Arini. The fabric was dyed using indigo by the craftswomen of Safi Crafts. The canopy served to highlight the entrance as well as provide shade for the gathering space below.
The Student Exhibition 2019 was held at the Ras El Ain Gallery in Amman.
The Student Exhibition
Back for a second edition, Amman Design Week’s Student Exhibition is a connecting point for students from all educational institutions in Jordan. As the only cross-university and cross-disciplinary showcase in Jordan, the Student Exhibition offers all students enrolled in Jordanian high-schools and universities across the country a chance to kick-start their careers by joining a mentorship program and showcasing their work to our audiences.
The mentorship program offers students an extracurricular learning experience by matching them with industry practitioners who will act as mentors that assist them in realizing and producing their designs. Participating students are also given the chance to take part in a competition that offers a cash reward to one distinctive entry, and other participation prizes.
Talks and Workshops
Urban Agriculture in Jordan: Opportunities, Challenges, and Accomplishments.
Franziska Wehinger, Dr. Mohammad al-Asad, Machiel Van Niewenhove, Ibrahim Hamarneh, Layla al Qasim, Kevin Schiltz, Hala Bdeir, Bashar Humeid.
Future Food / Future City –– This exhibition is a collaboration with Greening The Camps, with special thanks to the Center for the Study of the Built Environment.
Culture and Food
Future Food/Future City is an open-air demonstration of possibility; an imagined future for the city’s public spaces, and a re-examined illustration of how our rooftops, gardens, streets, and schools could be transformed into green spaces that bring communities together and transform livelihoods. It introduces a holistic approach that tackles different parts of the food chain; the way food is grown, processed, transported, consumed, reused, and recycled.
The swiftly evolving food technologies of hydroponics, aquaponics, and aeroponics are revolutionizing the way we produce our food and utilize and interpret our cities and countryside. The exhibition engages audiences in a leap into the future with the use of digital tools, as well as a return to past artisanal rituals, common resources, and agricultural practices of organic farming and permaculture.
Hussein Alazaat –– Calligraphic Steps, Abdul Muhsen Al Khazimy Stairway, 2019.
Urban Interventions
Painted by the calligrapher and designer Hussein Alazaat, the Abdul Muhsen Al Khazimy Stairway in Jabal Al Lweibdeh is dressed in a verse from a poem by Aboul-Qacem Echebbi entitled “If the People Wanted Life One Day”.
