The only other blogs that covered IDF happened to belong to two panelists:

International Design Forum Blog: The International Design Forum blog edited by Marcus Fairs

360 Degrees East by Ahmed Hameid, a Jordanian designer and brand strategist based in Amman.

Sheikh Majed Al Sabah

With the amount of activity in the retail sector in the Middle East, you would think that there would be a lot more original retail ventures sprouting up in the region. But you would be wrong.

Instead, most of what passes for innovative retail are usually imported fashion chains except, of course for Sheikh Majed Al Sabah. A fashion aficionado from Kuwait, Majed has built a successful retail brand, called Villa Moda, that has built a reputation for his futuristic souq inspired retail locations by working with the likes of Marcel Wanders and Jaime Hayon. Marcel for his new Bahrain location and Jaime for the Dubai Festival City.

During the forum, he announced his projects and gave Marcus Fairs a little preview:

Marcel Wander’s vision of Villa Moda in Bahrain

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Given that Dubai is made of 90 percent foreign expats, it was natural that one of the recurring themes during the forum was that of globality. Here are some quotes:

“Globality is limited by local laws and limitations. You cannot be interational if you are proud of your nationality.

I’m not proud of being an Italian because I did not choose to be Italian.

You should be proud of what you choose to be.

International is a state of mind and at the same time you can be local because you live here.

• Oliviero Toscani, former United Benneton provacteur photographer on being International.

“With the amount of air travel and the internet, I think the (importance) of nationality is going to disappear.”

• Klaus Brauer, Director of Pasenger Satisfaction and Revenue for Commercial Airplaines, Boeing. The topic was about the future implications of technology.

“Nationality is not important. What is important is the fulfillment of your dreams”

• Peter Zec, President of the Red Dot Awards responding to the point that it was harder to citizenship in the UAE than in Switzerland. The topic was about UAE as a strategic location for designers given its close proximity to Russia, Australia, Europe and Asia.

The last time I saw Karim Rashid cornered about his hypenated origins as half Egyptian was in the 2005 issue of 34 magazine where he was asked about his perspective as an semi Eastern designer on how to bring the East and West together.

In the article, the writer Hedi Hartwig admitted expecting ‘some insight about the black cloud the world was under’ with the clash between American and Islamic extremism. Instead she got were the ramblings of a hardcore globalist. ‘There is no national design anymore. There is no cultural vernacular (when it comes to product design!)’ he exclaimed.

Cut to this year’s Industrial Design Forum in Dubai where Karim admits realising his Egyptian Influence in his work during Rem Koolhaas’s Mini marathon of interviews:

“When i got to Cairo (for an art exhibition a year and half ago) I had a strange feeling that this was my fatherland. I saw people that reminded me of my father. I saw a culture and a feeling that was so deep within me and it was dormant. And I realised looking back at my work when i got back to my office that a lot of my work had some resemblance to Egyptian and Middle Eastern culture.”

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Photo Credit: 360 Degrees East
Karim Rashid

Ok, I’ll admit it. For years I’ve felt slightly jealous of some of my fellow bloggers that reside in countries that have a rich design scene, that is, until now. As some of you know, I live in Dubai that has made a name for itself for it’s appetite for crazy architecture.

Recently, they had their first design forum where they invited prominent designers such as Karim Rashid, Michael Young and Marcus Wanders with the intention to openly discuss the importance of design for the future of the United Arab Emirates and the Middle East.

Personal Highlights included meeting up with Michael Young, finally getting to see Karim Rashid, staying up for the Rem Koolhaas’s Mini marathon of interviews (They went on till nearly 1am), saying hello to Marcus Fairs (The founding Editor of Icon magazine) and Sheikh Majed Al Sabah of Villa Moda that I’ll write about in a bit.

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International Design Forum 2007

Enter the world of enthralling art installations by Peter Callesen. Peter traverses the fairytale landscape weaving between dreams and reality in the creation of these whimsical masterpieces. Lending life to lapsed childhoods, Peter brands enchanting three dimensional creations as a kind of sublime utopian embodiment. Layers take on a magical nuance as perceived by the transformation of a flat piece of paper. The static sculptures, with their inability to ‘escape’, lends a tragic air to the entire installation.

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Peter Callesen

If you thought ‘Joy’ and ‘Monsters’ did not go together, then think again. Joshua Burbis’s Longoland, a star attraction at the recent BKLYN Design, is a collection of monsters designed to secrete the joy juices in your body with its stuffed carcases of imaginery monsters.

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Longoland
Apartment Therapy; BKLYN Designs
My Space: Joshua Burbis

Design Observer points out to an excerpt from a book by linguist David Harrison:

“Languages can package knowledge in radically different ways, thus facilitating different ways of conceptualizing, naming, and discussing the world.”

If languages package information, can they be considered design objects?

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Design Observer: Languages as Design Objects