Cairo Design Week: 21 creatives from the region make seven new works together
TheMENAEdit puts an Egyptian lead and two regional collaborators in each of seven teams; their pieces show at Cairo Design Week, 19 to 28 November.
Seven new pieces of design made by mixed teams from across the Middle East and North Africa will be one of the things to look for at this year's Cairo Design Week, which runs from 19 to 28 November. The project is called TheMENAEdit, and it brings together 21 creatives of more than ten nationalities, CairoScene reported on 3 November.
The programme is presented by Creative Dialogues, founded by Yasmine Vanda, and was developed with Creative Districts, the team behind Cairo Design Week, and Design Point Studio, which curates it. Vanda spent about two months putting the teams together with Karim El Hayawan and Nehal Leheta of Design Point Studio. Each of the seven teams has an Egyptian lead and two collaborators from elsewhere in the region, and between them they cover design, architecture, urban planning, craft and writing.
Every team was given a brief for either a product or an installation. The participants first came to Cairo for a cultural visit, then returned for a prototyping trip, with research, remote meetings and check-ins in between. The individual works have not been described yet; they will be revealed at the festival.
What makes the show different from a normal design display is that the process will be on the walls too. Alongside the finished works, the teams will exhibit their sketches, research, photographs and material tests, under the theme "Unlocking Creative Boundaries: Pushing Practice, Process, and Creative Possibility". Vanda told CairoScene that the region has the talent it often imports, and that the programme documents the design thinking behind each piece.
Cairo Design Week returns for its fourth edition this month, spread across several parts of the city. The venue for TheMENAEdit's exhibition has not been announced, so keep an eye on Cairo Design Week's programme as the 19 November opening gets closer. Design students and anyone working in a creative field will get the most from it, since the research and prototypes sit next to the finished pieces.