Published:
Two teams from Heriot-Watt's Dubai Campus' first and second year Architecture and Interior Design students have showcased their model design work at the Dubai Design District (d3).
This has been a challenging but incredibly rewarding experience for our students.
The students were amongst the eight finalists in a contest, organized by Heriot-Watt University in collaboration with Dubai Design Week at d3, that set a unique challenge to the region's young, prospective designers: to develop a design that illustrated the in-between spaces. Titled 'Designing the Void', the inter-university competition encouraged students to animate the parts of a design that usually ignore 'the voids', creating an interactive outdoor node within the urban landscape.
The initial 32 teams were invited to submit a digital design and a small scale 3D model of their design to the judges. Eight groups were then selected from this batch and given the opportunity to develop full scale models of their designs. The shortlisted models were exhibited at the Heriot-Watt University Dubai Campus before being relocated to Dubai's celebrated design district, d3.
Mohammad Saeed Al-Shehhi, Chief Operating Officer of Dubai Design District (d3), said, “d3 is proud to welcome the talented students from Heriot-Watt University into our creative community. Our collaboration with such a highly reputed educational partner highlights our vision to help nurture aspiring young talent, simultaneously showcasing d3's role as a hub for design and innovation that pushes creativity forward to drive and develop the design sector for the benefit of the wider economy.”
Challenging and rewarding
Vanessa Northway, Associate Head of School of Textiles and Design at Heriot-Watt University, said, “This has been a challenging but incredibly rewarding experience for our students. We are so immensely proud of them and are happy to see them carry the Heriot-Watt name high. To make up two thirds of the finalists selected in a region-wide contest shows the level of talent we have here at our University.”
The finalist students were:
Team DV17: Halah Ashraff, Tuleen Karazon, Abdulla Ibrahim, and Wisam Ali
Team DV22: Aniqa Amir, Muskaan Motiwala, Sabrina Khanfar, and Anoushka Kolahalu
Pictured are:
Alastair Donald, Archietcture Programme Mamager, British Council
Zayad Motlib ,Founder of d-Nat (Dubai Network for Art, Architecture and Technology)
Abdulla Ibrahim, Winner DV17
Professor Wael Mulla, Associate Head of EGIS
Halah Ashraff,Winner DV 17
Prof. Ammar Kaka, Provost, Dubai Campus
Wisam Alim, Winner DV 17
Dr Harpreet Seth, EGIS lecturer
Steve Denyer, Chair Architecture Programme, Canadian University Dubai
Vanessa Northway, Associate Head of SOTD