young minds and Creativity--AUD final year showcase -Interior Design

It was raining...

As I parked my car and walked on the wet sidewalks, I remembered the tension I had when 10 years ago I was hanging my final year project..

By sheer faith in the conceptual foundation of my design thinking, my professors encouraged me .I reached the Jury incomplete still struggling with solving the openness of the project to the waterfront and the privacy needed for the guests..

 

 What experience we would have today sitting on the other side of the educational act?

As I stepped into the cosy office of Dr. Albert Fakhoury, greeted by familiar faces from last year jury, the talented and handpicked professionals, I could smell the tension as we went through the standardized students presentation.

Sophisticated and carefully designed banners, laid out reports, Sketch books and report thesis.. All put up showing clearly the information that as juror you need to grasp in five minutes the work of two semesters of hard work..

 

The first thing that stroke me is the genuine interest of these students in their city Dubai.. Each one of them is relating his project to the community and the life of Dubai adding to the  cultural, social, educational, artistic even spiritual aspects of the city dwellers experience... From cultural centres to spas to libraries to meditation centres to centres of cultural understanding to fashion, we had an overview of genuine reflection of these young minds insights on putting their imprints on the city fabric.

As a juror , I learned a lot from this outburst of creativity..

First, my belief that Design is a thinking process has renewed .Although the designer needs to immerse himself in it, there is a need for observation moments..Moments that you step out and observe the stage where you are in close out and becoming aware of how you need to start the next stage. Design Development if not controlled mentally by the designer might take you to final outcome that instead of reinforcing the creative spark originating from , might bring out its dysfunctional aspects..

I also discovered that Design is a volumetric poetry .It is a poetry of spaces, an interplay of rhythm, language and proportion and clarity.it is a tool to assert how we relate to our cultural identity and our environment…Fashion, spirituality might be a starting point to engage us in a dialogue as a designers.As we research the interrelationships between the theme  we have embraced and its physical manifestation, we understand more ourselves and engage architecture as a tool to share this understanding with others..

I realised that Design is also Silence ,,just like a piece of jazz music, the melody needs to move out of silence and back to it just like breath, just like thoughts, just like human beings birthed out of the silence of the womb and back to it,,

 

A designer needs a high level of architectural presentation. The projects we have seen explained their intention and aspiration in detailed plans , sections , elevations and mood boards : the distinguished students were able to relate them in depth to their design development and original conceptual foundation building consistency throughout  the project  .

I was delighted to sense the high self esteem and confidence emerged from these young minds ; they presented business cards , projects and topics in a lucid style and passion ..Their projects exhibited a great understanding of the relationship between architecture and interior design.. Some projects even spilled over urban design and even landscape.. It was the first milestone in honing Their ability of working in multidisciplinary environments..

I realized that young minds like seeds have in them the power and the will to flourish and to bring an added flair of skills and undiscovered tools.. All what we need is to be present for them and attend to them motivating them... This is surely what we aspired to do  as jurors and this is exactly what AUD has been successfully providing it  as a learning institution .

Sustainability generate revenues

During a master planning meeting , we spent one day discussing biking routes alternative and standards for bikers to safely circulate across the community . a hard edge conservative complained about the useless waste of time specially that we have not yet fixed road corridor widths.. I have to admit that as an urban designer i had a moment of self doubt .. Are we making a big deal out of it .. Today I learned that in fact it is worth it .. Dubai just announced its plan to rent visitors f it's downtown bikes to discover it .. This is not due to an instant decision .. Bike lanes and cycling master plans are part and parcel of the human dimension of Evan design .. Biking master plan are now though of in regional and metropolitan level .. I can imagine the planning team of dubai downtown master plan sitting in a meeting and arguing if it was taking too much of their time thinking about it .. Little did they know that it would make their development the first in the Middle east to offer online bike rentals .
Dubai rent a bike has its seed back Into those meetings .. Let us give some credit to the urban planners of the planning team who made this come true

Valentine and cities

Valentine day .. Red hearts .. Red roses .. Red gadgets .. Teddy bears .. Candle lights .. The day where couples celebrate love , romance and intimacy ..
Love has been always associated with intimacy with the capacity of opening up a deep part of ourselves to another .. It begins With trusting oneself .. Trust is built through communication and space ..
How cities can support communication ? How cities can support trust ? How cities can support intimacy ?
Florence comes here as a good example .. It's network of piazzas , human scale streets, and unpredictable fabric is a physical manifestation of intimacy ,,, it is as if the buildings are supporting each other .. There is no boundaries between urban - public an facade - private .. Although both are well defined well enclosed ..
Cities are our most complex human creations and as such it needs to be essentially human allowing intimacy to be embodied within its streets within its architecture

It is not just another software.. It is GIS

GIS stands for geographical information system . It's technicalities are known to most urbanises and teams engaged in urban planning because of the versatility and the diversity in which it's base map and database is built ..
During the years , working with private and public sectors institutions , I realised that the focus on the output and the form in which the analysis need to shown especially the interactivity of the web-view made GIS a one time exercise ..
As a professional , I perceive GIS as a decision making tool on the planning decisions ranging from land use allocation to height .. It is this focus and function that optimises and justifies the investment in the application and the training it needs ..
For GIS to be that, it has essentially to be adopted as an essential part of the organisation policies and development procedures .. The management as well as the employees need a change management strategy that focus on true challenges in the organisational culture as well as the technical skills upgrade program that need to roll out ..
So may argue that GIS is a tactical decision .. It is just a software .. Well, it is not .. It is a strategic decision that implies that we need a more sophisticated platforms that enable multiple decision points to weigh in before we approve a a direction or approach..
So, before you sign the procurement form or the invoice for acquiring a GIS in your company , ask one question : what is your strategy to make it a part of the daily tasks of the employees ?

What about urban design ?

As the property development became more obsessed with the investment analysis ratios and crunching. The bottom line numbers , we lost the spontaneity of urban design being essentially a creative process
Urban designers in mature property markets became the tool to prepare ready made streets sections , ready made urban form , ready made urban typologies that enables the developer to get the yield - of course financial yield
This short term thinking defies the current research whereby more and more people chooses communities that make them enjoy a sense of place - place being the holistic experience which the space attributes and values convey...
One time , I was asked to produce in one day a sketch for an urban square in order for the development team to plug the numbers in their sheet and calculate the value driven from these design changes .. Everything else became secondary although the main and essential meaning of the square is about the sense of place and the meaning it conveys ...
Urban design is a creative activity ... Creativity means leaving the known to venture into the unique and original ..
This essentially means an industry who has the guts to embrace the original .. Do we have what it takes for that ?

More life energy in urban space

Cities are one of the most intricate human inventions ..multiple generation think , imagine , plan and incrementally build neighborhood , communities which grew into districts connected by an increasingly interconnected flows of goods and people .. It is the largest laboratory to see in real time how human shape their physical environment by the way they think about their relationship with space
We are the space .. Because urban space essentially is born in our minds
So to answer the question , if we need to have more life energy In our cities , we need to study the beliefs system of its communities regarding how they energize themselves
Is it through socializing in open public spaces ?
Is it through small gathering in their houses ?
Is it through exchanging knowledge ?
Is it through getting in touch with nature ?
What are their habits in shaping their urban space?
It is in these simple questions that the civil contract by which they decided to live together is revealed ... That civil contract that list of values , habits and beliefs will point out to the sources of life energy that are needed to be injected in failing cities , sad cities , unhappy cities , soulless cities .