Learn Arabic via calligraphy at Expo 2020
Designed by architect Asif Khan, benches teach UAE’s values
Isit on a bench that reads compassion in Arabic, as I write this story, a quality deeply valued in UAE’s culture. Walk a little further and you’ll find ‘distinction’, followed by ‘determination’, ‘blessed’ and other such words around the Expo 2020 Dubai’s thematic districts.
Designed by British architect, Asif Khan, who also designed the world fair’s public realm, and Lara Captan, Amsterdam-based Lebanese typographer Lara Captan — the 50 white benches are inspired by Arabic calligraphy. But as a visitor sits down to relax on one of these benches during their journey, they might not realise how these poetic scripts found their way there.
The words for the benches were originally crowdsourced via Expo 2020’s social media users, who were asked to select words that, to them, best represented the event, its subthemes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability, along with the UAE. Those words were then refined with a group of 30 young Emirati professionals, who made the final selection and decided where the script-based benches should be located on site.
The benches eloquently combine form and function. Each design spells out a meaningful word in three-dimensional calligraphy-inspired Arabic script.
Attention has been paid to every aspect of their design, including the words’ meaning internationally and regionally; the shape of the words when they are moulded into their 3D bench-form; the district in which they are placed; and the material each bench is made from — for example, the bench featuring the word for ‘vision’ is transparent, while the bench for the word ‘dream’ is formed by a series of hammocks.