Designing a better future drives ideas at Dubai show
Design is much more than an interesting couch or lamp, says Brendan McGetrick, curator of the Global Grad Show at Dubai’s forthcoming Design Week, Oct. 24-29. The show is running for a second year, with more than 135 projects selected from 50 design schools in 30 countries around the globe, all aimed at making people’s everyday lives easier.
“When you have enough schools, from enough places, you really can see a cross-section of what young designers are thinking about, and then you can really see how those concerns and interests and fascinations are then channelled through the cultural context, material context and economic context they’re dealing with,” McGetrick says.
“So you can see how a student in India and Singapore and Canada all address issues of blindness.”
A recurring theme among the projects submitted was accessibility, says McGetrick — making cities more accessible for people who are blind or in wheelchairs — along with ways to make life easier for the elderly in our communities.
“Societies are aging all over the world,” McGetrick says. “And regardless of whether they’re aging, all of us age, and young designers see that as a vital issue that design, and their work in particular, should respond to, address and help in one way or another.”
Fabyan Blomme, a fourth-year industrial design student from B.C., has been selected to take part in the Grad Show. His project, the Mountain Rim Coffee Sleeve — made from recycled card stock, with die-cut splits that create a lip in the sleeve and make it easier to hold a take-away coffee — was designed with elderly people in mind.
“Mountain Rim is a redesign of the common coffee sleeve,” Blomme says. “It basically addresses helping create a better grip.”
Blomme says he was surprised to find how little has been done to modify or improve the common coffee sleeve since it was invented.
“It was 1993, I believe, when the coffee sleeves came out, and since then it’s just been logos, colours and textures, maybe, that have changed, but the overall look of it has stayed the same.”
The opportunity to go to Dubai and meet other like-minded designers is exciting for Blomme on a few levels, he says.
“I actually graduated in Dubai from high school,” he says. “So I’m excited to be back, but I think it’s an incredible opportunity to see top designers from around the world, from the top universities.”
In selecting the chosen projects for the Grad Show, McGetrick says he asked himself one question: “Why does this need to exist?”
Those that made the cut include “a system of collapsible hydroponic farms that grow food in empty shipping containers” and “a touch-based music therapy platform for autistic children,” and come from schools like London’s Royal College of Arts, MIT, Milan’s Istituto Europeo di Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, and the Rhode Island School of Design, ranging from low-tech to high-tech, but all addressing similar problems, McGetrick says.