Dubai, the design capital of the Middle East, is also an important showcase for young talent. The event is the Global Grad Show 2018 at the Dubai Design District (d3), during Dubai Design Week from the 12th to the 17th of November: the graduates of the best design and technology universities present inventions to improve human life and resolve the most urgent problems on a global scale, democratic solutions designed for all and accessible to all. On display will be 150 projects sent by students at the best 100 universities and schools, from the Design Academy of Eindhoven to the Royal College of Art in London, selected from more than 1,000 submissions received, double compared to last year.
Assembly, a future without the kitchen
What would the world be like without the kitchen? This is the subject chosen by Yu Lin, a graduate in Design Product at the Royal College of Art in London. The project is called Assembly, a nomadic cooking set for preparing food anywhere: a single portable box with a handle that contains everything needed, from the hotplate to the pots, designed to prepare and consume dishes in complete freedom.
Grit, training on the sand
How delightful but also tiring it is to walk on sand! Aarish Netarwala, a graduate of the Art Centre College of Design of Pasadena in California, has invented Grit, a pair of shoes designed for resistance training that reproduce the experience of training on the soft sand typical of coastal regions.
Twenty, soap travels light
Reducing transport and CO2 emissions: this is the green objective of Twenty, the project presented by Mirjam de Bruijn of the Design Academy of Eindhoven. It is a detergent, a washing up liquid and a shampoo concentrated in a powder, a bar and a liquid capsule, light and with reduced packaging. Once at home, just add water to obtain the liquid product.
Signalling affinity
In the era of social media and virtual communications, finding the right partner is difficult. Ripple is a wearable extension of the body that identifies individuals inside a room who are attracted; if the attraction is reciprocal, the tentacles will move. An idea perfected by a team of four designers from the Royal College of Art of London,, Huishan Ma, Lyle Baumgarten, Maria Apud Bell and Jonathan Rankin.
The home doctor
Blink is a smart device for conveniently measuring health indicators and performing basic medical tests at home. It guides the user, collects the data, sends them to the doctor who, in turn, can promptly respond with an opinion. The project is by Belfug Sener, a Turkish girl and former student in Industrial Design of the Middle East Technical University of Ankara in Turkey.
Mobile microclimate with the smart suit
On the website, he defines himself as “a designer who works with a ‘human-centric’ approach based on the person, with objects that can have a positive impact on the world”. Dayna Mailach of the Pratt Institute of New York presents Reheat, a line of clothing that creates personalised mobile microclimates, in order to stay comfortable in any situation and environmental temperature.
Innovation and technology
This year the addition of an Innovation conference will examine how the underlying beliefs of a person, nation, company or religion will shape and influence the development of technology focusing on how culture and creativity will be shaped by technologies. Ben Vickers, Chief Technology Officer and AI curator of the Serpentine Gallery, and Kenric McDowell, who leads the Artist + Machine Intelligence program at Google Arts & Culture, are the cocurators of the Belief in AI conference.
