Dhahran – Asdaf News:
By: Samar Yahya
The King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, Ithra’s “Tanween” event, which had the theme “Scale” and ran from November 1– 4, 2023, featured a variety of cutting-edge art projects from the global design community and gave designers the opportunity to perform live and educate attendees about their techniques.
“Tanween”, hosted four exhibitions, titled “Grad Expo,” “From the Lab,” “Challenges Exhibition” and “Routes to Roots”.
“Routes to Roots “explores the power of scaling in design and demonstrates that an entity’s physical size is not always a reliable indicator of its impact on the environment.
“Routes to Roots” examines the influence of scaling in design and shows that an object’s size does not always correspond to its environmental influence.
The partnership between Milan-based Isola and the “Routes to Roots” exhibition marks the innovative development of a carefully selected digital platform that features only independent design studios and up-and-coming international designers. It gives innovation, sustainability, and the application of biomaterials a lot of weight.
The selected designers, who come from over 16 countries, have designed projects that emphasize environmentally conscious design concepts. They innovate and blend conventional methods with biomaterials, raw materials, and garbage from homes and businesses to produce contemporary design pieces.
On “Tanween’s” final day, winners of the Mega Challenge to find ways to improve the lives of refugees around the world, were announced. The Mega Challenge hosted over 60 people from 14 different nationalities in the three sections of education, food security and power.
“Creative Resilience” team with members from Canada, South Korea, Nigeria, and Bangladesh, were winners in education section, whereas “Autm” team was the food security challenge winner, while the “Musul” team took the power award.
The three winning projects focused on refugee camps in Mauritania, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
“Tanween” awarded the Saudi ladies on the “Ray of Light” team a sustainable solution award for their internationally recognized positive behaviour measuring technique, while the Saudi team of the “Sun Box” took home the most creative solution award for their cooking appliance.
“Tanween” also hosted hands-on workshops, such as Break the Design, to improve the technical skills of both professionals and amateurs.
“Tanween” first edition was in 2018, ever since “Tanween” hosted 75,000 programs participants, 125 international and local speakers, 30 exhibitions, 170,000 visitors and 110 workshops and masterclasses.
