In May, Dubai hosted the first International Design Forum. Realising that this urban laboratory needs a major new event of this kind to reflect on the role architecture and design can play in the region as a whole, Moutamarat, a joint venture between the Middle Eastern developer Tatweer and a Saudi business information firm, created what they hope will become an annual platform.

At the same time, Sheikh Hamdam, Chairman of the Executive Council of Dubai, pledged a $10-billion investment in further education, spurring a key IDF agenda to invite international experts to brainstorm proposals for a major new “School of Creativity” in the Middle East. Five hundred professionals from across the region with some international visitors, mostly speakers including Rem Koolhaas (OMA has been active in the Middle East with schemes in Dubai, Kuwait and Quatar since 2005), Sheikh Majed, Chairman of Villa Moda in Kuwait and designers Hani Rashid and Oliviero Toscani, gathered for the two and a half day long Forum at the Madinat Jumeirah. The sessions focussed on how architecture, design and infrastructure planning could keep creatively in step with the rapid growth in Arab cities.

Majed said IDF wanted guidelines to “help this part of the world develop itself with respect to its own culture. We are an under developed region with a flush of money. We are concerned about bad design and copies of the Western world.” H.E. Omar Maani, the mayor of Amman, talked of a 1,000-fold population increase in his city since the 1920s, largely due to political refugees. “Planning took a back seat, with city design demand-led rather than plan-led.” Rem Koolhaas told a packed room that criticism of developments needed to be local, rather than from the West, to avoid “recycling discredited architectural models”, while Toscani was one of a few speakers who warned that, hand in hand with urban ambition, “This region must allow greater freedoms of artistic expression.” Lucy Bullivant

https://www.moutamarat.com/idf