Search

Art

Desert Cast Kuwait City Pavilion at Dubai Design Week ’18

12.18.18 | By
Desert Cast Kuwait City Pavilion at Dubai Design Week ’18

Desert Cast is a project by three Kuwait-based designers who are hoping to contribute to the development of the Gulf region’s design identity. Their project seeks to be a hybrid between past and present, local and borrowed. Further, Desert Cast is an exploration of locally available materials and fabrication methods used to reach a local ‘maker’ identity.

The three designers of the project – Jassim AlNashmi, Kawther AlSaffar, and Ricardas Blazukas – were invited by Dubai Design Week to participate in the week-long design festival to represent Kuwait City in Abwab, the centerpiece exhibition of the festival. The theme they were given was storytelling.

AlNashmi, AlSaffar, and Blazukas dove into the history of Kuwait’s design identity, aiming to tell a story about using the past to create contemporary product designs. The Desert Cast installation visually narrates this story by showcasing functional objects in 3D that are made through lost-foam- casting. They ended up with 46 custom-designed, functional products that were sand-cast in a foundry in Kuwait with the goal of shedding light on the master fabricators’ craft.

Desert Cast was presented in the Kuwait City Pavilion and accompanied by five screens showing the five stages of the fabrication process.

Kelly Beall is Director of Branded Content at Design Milk. The Pittsburgh-based writer and designer has had a deep love of art and design for as long as she can remember, from Fashion Plates to MoMA and far beyond. When not searching out the visual arts, she's likely sharing her favorite finds with others. Kelly can also be found tracking down new music, teaching herself to play the ukulele, or on the couch with her three pets – Bebe, Rainey, and Remy. Find her @designcrush on social.