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Games people play

Dubai Design Week 2015 – Themes of play and culture were examined by six designers from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia during the inaugural design festival.

: The designers were asked to give insights into the local aesthetics of their region

: ‘Abwab means ‘doors’ in Arabic, so it’s about walking into a culture but also exposing it to the rest of the world’ – Rawan Kashkoush, creative director of Abwab

The Abwab Pavillions at Dubai Design Week 2015

Tunisian installation at The Abwab Pavillions at Dubai Design Week, 2015

The Abwab pavilions feature works by designers from the MENASA countries including Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates that centred around the theme of play. The pavilions, designed by UAE architecture firm Loci, were created using multiwall polycarbonate sheets and sand.

Three designers from Jordan re-imagined the humble swing in an immersive, multimedia exhibition. When in use, motion-detecting sensors built into the framework trigger a series of soothing sounds and dream-like visuals of public swings in Jordan.

The Tunisian pavilion presents 999, a game comprising 999 interlocking plywood discs that can be assembled into a variety of shapes. The discs are marked with white-noise frequencies to denote the visual and spatial perception of sound. ‘It’s a game you can play forever and invent different shapes each time,’ curator Chacha Atallah tells LS:N Global. ‘It’s about letting your imagination go.’