“This is how this little collaboration came about, exactly at the time when I just started a new fiery paper artwork — the Phoenix,” the UK-based artist said in an Instagram post alongside Rohulskyi’s video. “It seems symbolic because Bogdan’s life in Ukraine has been burned to ashes, but from the ashes a new chapter of his life is rising and beginning to take flight here in the UK.”

However, Brodskaya admits that the poignant comparison only came to her after the fact. “In truth, there was no mental concept or idea that inspired me to create this artwork in the first place.”

“If I really have to attach any words to this artwork,” she continues, “I would say that this portrait is about coming into your personal power and burning down…old patterns and beliefs in order to give rise to your Higher Self — the part of you that is pure light.”

“Yet every time you take courage to follow your heart and your true self, the fire of the Phoenix gets stronger… until it is no longer possible to suppress it,” Brodskaya adds. “…Phoenix comes out in its full glory to purify and burn down everything that no longer serves the real you.”

The details on the face and bird are exquisite, with intricate tiny folds, cuts, and curls. Bright yellows, oranges, and reds explode across the black background of the three-dimensional art. The entire portrait is composed of only paper and glue. And as an extra delight, Brodskaya included a hidden message written in pen on a few of the feathers: “Watch me rise like a Phoenix, from the ashes, to become a heroine, of my own legend.”

Brodskaya got her start as an artist in 2006 when she got her first job as a graphic designer and illustrator. However, she soon gave up digital design to embrace her passion for hands-on art in the form of paper quilling.

“Paper always held a special fascination for me,” she says on her website. “I’ve tried many different methods and techniques of working with it, until I found the way that has turned out to be ‘the one’ for me: now I draw with paper instead of on it.”

Brodskaya’s unique and dramatic style has quickly made a name for her among art-enthusiasts and celebrities. Among her 200 projects and commissions over the past several years, she has made paper paintings for Oprah Winfrey, Nieman Marcus, Paramount Pictures, Hermés, the Country Music Association, Starbucks, and Target, to name a few. She has also authored a book entitled Painting with Paper: Paper on the Edge that sheds light on her creative process. The artist posts all her latest pieces on her Instagram and Facebook accounts.

The post Yulia Brodskaya’s Phoenix Portrait Mirrors the Life of Her Ukrainian Collaborator first appeared on Dornob.

After his formal education was cut short at age 13 so he could support his family, Paboy began work in his uncle’s tailor shop, quickly developing a “keen eye for choosing fabrics and color combinations.” But in 2013, after surviving 22 years under the brutal dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh, he fled his country for the pursuit of freedom and fortune elsewhere. Over the course of two brutal and dangerous years, he journeyed across the desert and Mediterranean Sea, where he finally landed in Italy.

He was immediately placed in a migrant camp, where conditions were so overcrowded and deplorable that it was closed two years later. Paboy was then transferred to a camp in Naples, where his life began to turn around.

Getting a job making tiles and vases at a prestigious majolica factory, the African artist found lodgings with a freelance British journalist, who provided him with a room of his own. However, by the end of 2019, Paboy lost his job when the slow wheels of bureaucracy prevented his Italian asylum papers from being renewed on time.

A few months later, the COVID pandemic kept the world and Paboy at home, where he discovered a sewing machine and some leftover fabric in his host’s apartment. With inspiration from the textile pattern and permission from the journalist, he dusted off his tailoring skills. “My mind went straight to how lovely it would look as a cushion,” he said in an interview with House and Garden.

He posted the resulting throw pillow on a new Instagram account in the middle of 2020, and his work was an immediate hit. Calling his brand “In Casa by Paboy,” the 28-year-old designer has since built a cushion empire that ships out 80 to 100 pillows a month, selling for €100 apiece. His distinctive style and story have also caught the attention of major publications like the Financial Times and Vogue, as well as collaborators and stores interested in stocking his creations.

His design inspiration comes in part from Naples, which he says now feels like home. “The city is very colorful — all the buildings, the paintings. When I was working in the factory, the ladies all made tiles with different, vibrant colors and I was inspired by those combinations, too,” Paboy explains.

Success has come quickly, but it has not always gone smoothly. “Honestly, I haven’t always felt like I wanted to be a business owner,” he said in another interview with Courier. “I was very good at football — that’s what I dreamed of. Being a business owner is something I didn’t have any experience of… Being an immigrant and setting up a business is not easy; it’s quite hard.”

One payoff though, is being able to fully care for his family back home. The artisan happily explains that “Everything I do is for my family, for my sisters; I’m now in a position where I can support them from here.”

Paboy hopes to expand his offerings in the near future, adding: “I don’t want to rely on only cushions. I want to make more homewares — tablecloths, bedsheets, duvet covers.”

Unfortunately, scalability remains an issue for his company. Even after hiring two other African asylum-seekers to help him, demand far outstrips their resources. And because Paboy wants to keep everything handmade for the foreseeable future, he’s currently in talks with immigrant associations in Naples to enlist more help and simultaneously help his fellow refugees into better lives of their own.

The post Paboy Bojang’s Pillows Pay Tribute to Immigrant Ingenuity first appeared on Dornob.

The project is a collaboration between charities Good Chance, Choose Love, and the War Horse Handspring Puppet Company. The gigantic Little Amal “walks” with the aid of one volunteer inside on stilts, another two helpers to control her arms, and one more to stabilize her from the back. Her size helps draw attention, forcing observers to think about the plight of the hundreds of thousands of refugee children across the world right now.

“It is because the attention of the world is elsewhere right now that it is more important than ever to reignite the conversation about the refugee crisis and to change the narrative around it,” said Amir Nizar Zuabi, Artistic Director of the project Walk With Amal. “Yes, refugees need food and blankets, but they also need dignity and a voice. The purpose of The Walk is to highlight the potential of the refugee, not just their dire circumstances. Little Amal is 3.5 meters tall because we want the world to grow big enough to greet her. We want her to inspire us to think big and to act bigger.”

Along her way, Little Amal passed through nine different countries: Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and finally England. Many cities have welcomed her visit with celebrations and ceremonies. In Turkey, for instance, she was greeted by real-life refugee children who lit her path with hand-held lanterns. In Brussels, thousands of local kids wrote letters to her. Little Amal even got to shake hands with the Pope at the Vatican.

Unfortunately, not all interactions to her emigration have been so positive. In Greece, protestors pelted Little Amal with stones as she walked down the streets, and local officials banned her from traveling through a village of Orthodox monasteries. The mayor of Calais, France also voiced public objections to her visit.

“If I was to say to you, we had nothing but warmth and support along the 8,000 km journey, it would not be true,” said Project Producer David Lan. “But what Little Amal seems to do is take the experience of people who are quite brutally marginalized and put it in the center. This is about goodwill. It is an opportunity for people to be sympathetic and imagine what it would be like to be her.”

But overall, Zubai notes that the impact of the mobile artwork has been positive. Pointing out that Amal means “hope” in Arabic, she said, “We have seen a lot of generosity. We’re doing this project to celebrate our shared humanity. We have met people ready to open their hearts and cities and think differently about this issue. An easy way to approach it is to say, ‘Let’s build fences, seclude ourselves, get out of Europe.’ But we wanted people to think about how they can welcome these people…Our nine-year-old giant has brought great joy. After almost two years of COVID, people are flocking to see her – but also to be together, which has been very touching.”

Before her walk concluded in Manchester, England today, fans were able to track Amal’s journey on the project website with an online map. Those wishing to donate to the refugee cause can contribute on the project’s homepage through Choose Love, an organization that provides food, shelter, medical services, and academic and vocational training for displaced children around the world.

The post Walk with Amal: Giant Puppet Completes 5,000-Mile Journey for Refugee Awareness first appeared on Dornob.

The crisis of child separation is ongoing along the boundary of the two neighboring countries, but with the relentless 24-hour news cycle typical of this digital age, the real story often gets lost in a sea of controversies, crises, and “fake news.” So it falls to organizations like RAICES to remind people that this saga isn’t playing out in some far-off place, but that it is in fact happening right on their doorstep, and that they need to be paying attention.

The 24 metal cages were installed all throughout the city, in heavily trafficked areas, outside major news and media outlets, and in front of big corporations like Google. Each cage comes with a sign that bears the hashtag #nokidsincages, and a quick visit to the RAICES website shows a harrowing video of children being held in shocking conditions at the border.

One child calls their detention center “the icebox” because of how cold it is, with more footage showing kids sleeping on thin mattresses, each covered only with a crumpled foil sheet. It’s this that’s shown to passerby in the NYC installation. Some of the cages even come with audio recordings that are played out loud, similar to the one that was leaked some months ago of a child crying and asking for their father. They’re a gripping and thought-provoking presence on the busy New York streets — and one that’s stopping people dead in their tracks and making them look.

Recent footage shows police officers removing a cage that was attached to a parking meter and ripping up the paper package inside, which was fashioned to look like a sleeping child. A statement on the No Kids in Cages website reads, “This is not history. This is happening now. Hundreds more have been separated. Six children have died.”

“#NoKidsInCages is about the children. We cannot be a nation that separates families. For those who’ve forgotten, it’s time to remember and raise your voice. For those who didn’t know, it’s time to understand the plight of these innocent children.” said RAICES director Jonathan Ryan, adding that: “The litmus test of any society is how it treats children. By normalizing the detention of children in cages, we’re only going further down the path of forsaking the rights of all children.”

Most recently, a Trump administration official declined to confirm that basic sanitation, cleanliness, and sleep were rights that these children were entitled to. The No Kids in Cages installation aims to highlight all these issues and give kids everywhere the happy childhoods they deserve.

The post Guerrilla Art Installation in New York Highlights Child Separation at Mexican Border first appeared on Dornob.

Set to open between October 20th, 2020 and April 10th, 2021 in Dubai, U.A.E., the Italian Pavilion was made to celebrate the long lineage of explorers who sailed the seas over many centuries, weaving together a shared Mediterranean cultural heritage. CRA — along with Italo Rota Building Office, F&M Ingegneria, and Matteo Gatto & Associati — was tapped for the project after winning a contest to design the pavilion, which itself will take up around 3,500 square meters (about 38,000 square feet) and stand over 25 meters (82 feet) tall.

“Reusing the ships once on land was an act that had a profound appeal to us: not only because it is laden with historical value, but because it represents the realization of a circular architecture from the project’s beginning,” says Carlo Ratti, founding partner of CRA and director of the MIT Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He adds that “the ships that become part of the pavilion can continue to be used in different ways even after the end of the Expo.”

In a recent piece for Domus, architect Giovanni Comoglio offered a sharp rebuke of the concept and the connotations it carries given Italy’s hostility towards asylum seekers. The recently passed Salvini law cracks down on asylum rights by abolishing humanitarian protection permits, eventually leading to the closure of asylum centers. Italy has also closed its ports to rescued migrants, reportedly driving up the number of deaths at sea.

It’s this connection to the imagery of upturned boats that has people like Comoglio questioning how nobody involved in the process of designing and approving this project seemed to see a potential problem.

“The narrative of three capsized hulls — the only disclosed visual to powerfully reach the public — was given a stormy reception, and submerged mostly by critiques of the highest historical inconvenience,” he writes. “Representing by some upturned boats a country that has recently faced a period of harsh polemics concerning policies of closure to migration, implicitly and explicitly connected to several fatal shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, may surely result to many, in times of instant visual communication, as a proper communication stumble.”

“A Tower of Babel of incommunicability has arisen out of the dust of a debate consisting mostly of statements circulating on social media. The conversation blurred the borders between critique of design and critique of a communication concept. To be fair, the Italian-Italian nature of the architectural component of the debate has to be remarked. Still, something of a more general value comes out of the sands of Babel, the most formidable critical issue, at least for critics: it is highly difficult — if not plainly unnecessary — to make a properly architectural critique of such architecture.”

A runner-up in the competition designed by Dodi Moss and Eduardo Tresoldi generated a decidedly more positive reaction on social media. Their team’s proposal features a path through layers of transparent materials and greenery for a ghostly effect meant to conjure an Italian identity that has its roots in thousands of years of cultural history.

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But every now and then, you’ll spot something odd: a line of fresh laundry hung out to dry. A clean newish car parked right in the hallway. A pair of shoes set carefully beside a rotting chair. The face you spy in a window won’t be that of a ghost, necessarily, but rather that of a resident. Decades after these buildings were offered as temporary shelters to Georgians fleeing the war in nearby Abkhazia, hundreds of families remain, even as their homes break down around them.

Once, these “sanatoriums” were pristine health destinations for travelers from all over the former USSR, who were obliged to visit them annually in order to “sustain a healthy and productive workforce,” according to Koopmans. Built in the 1920s, the facilities took advantage of the therapeutic radon-carbonate mineral spring water found in the town, which was said to heal a host of illnesses. Consisting of 22 different buildings, the ornate sanatoriums peaked in popularity between the 60s and 80s, drawing in hundreds of thousands of visitors including Joseph Stalin himself. He even had his own personal bath house at one of the spas, with a relief sculpture depicting his welcome by the masses.

But with the break-up of the Soviet Union came dramatic changes in the small nation of Georgia, which sits along the Black Sea with Russia on one side and Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan on the other. The buildings fell into disrepair, and the desperate residents of Tskaltubo tore up its floors for firewood and salvaged its metal as scrap. Georgians fleeing the conflict in Abhkazia took up residence in 1992 with the permission of the government, and most simply never left. While some of the buildings have since been sold for redevelopment, others appear frozen in time — but life goes on inside them nonetheless.

Setting out to capture the beauty of the ruins, Koopmans didn’t realize the buildings were inhabited until he saw the residents firsthand. Born in Amsterdam and raised in Vancouver, Canada, he takes interest in “surreal structures in our world’s megacities and urban landscapes,” focusing on their geometry, patterns, and saturation in his work.

This particular photography project took a fascinating turn when he met and profiled some of the sanatorium’s 800-odd residents with the help of a translator. For example, an 82-year-old man named Radisha moved in with twelve members of his family after walking over 100 kilometers by foot with a bullet wound in his leg.

Taking a full five years to complete, Koopmans’ in-depth documentation of the area and its residents includes hundreds of photographs, a short film, and a few tidbits that might have otherwise been lost to history as the tides of change creep ever closer to the Soviet-era spas.

“There are plans to redevelop the town and invest millions of dollars into the reconstruction and renovation of some spa buildings,” he explains. “The displaced people from Abkhazia have been told that they will be moved into new homes, however this transformation has been slow. Much of the original architecture in Tskaltubo will be removed, along with the artifacts, objects, and decorations which remain.”

The post The Forgotten Residents of Georgia’s Abandoned Soviet-Era Spas first appeared on Dornob.

Early Career Highlights

Abdalla was a self-taught artist who gained recognition early in his life. At age 24, he unveiled his first solo exhibition of Egyptian modernism. After successfully showing his work all over Egypt, Abdalla was honored with a 1949 solo show at the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art in Cairo. Over the next decade, he would put on exhibitions all throughout the UK, Asia, Europe, and the United States, at one point participating in a group installation at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The same year as Abdalla’s Met exhibit (1956), Egypt’s politics were in upheaval, forcing the artist to relocate to Copenhagen. He continued to paint and put on both group and solo shows everywhere, from the Middle East and North Africa to Damascus, Beirut, Palestine, Paris, and Tunis. Shortly thereafter, he would move to France — but it was his introduction to artists involved in Copenhagen’s Cobra movement that most inspired his syncretic pieces.

ARABÉCÉDAIRE: Showcasing The “Creative Word” Concept

From April through June 2018, the Mosaic Rooms, an exhibition and research hub in London devoted to Middle Eastern visual culture, featured Abdalla’s ARABÉCÉDAIRE. Curated by Morad Montazemi, an art historian and research curator at Tate Modern, the show was the first of a three-part exhibition series called Cosmic Roads: Relocating Modernism, which also included the work of other key modernist artists from Egypt, Iran, and Morocco.

Abdalla named his show ARABÉCÉDAIRE after the French word for a visual alphabet primer commonly used by children when learning to read, “abécédaire’.” He felt the word provided an ideal representation of his “creative word” concept. It focused on six words that were particularly important to him: “Lovers,” “Revolution,” “Nubia,” “Caves,” Lettrism,” and “Klee,” each one of them being used to illustrate how the artist came to develop his distinctive visual language and political ideas through formerly unobserved materials and documents.

Behind The Words

Each word Abdalla chose for ARABÉCÉDAIRE was integral to his life as both a man and an artist — two roles that were entwined like the roots of a bramble bush.

L for Lovers

Abdalla made many paintings during his life of lovers and the word “desire.” These were inspired by his two grand loves: Tahia Halim, a popular Egyptian artist, and Dane Kirsten Blach, the mother of his children.

R for Revolution

Constantly in close proximity to political upheaval and war, Abdalla strove to access a “third space” in his work that would give a fresh voice to desperate and exploited people all around the world.

N for Nubia

The villages and countrysides of the Nubian region greatly inspired Abdalla’s artistic vision. They made him feel secure as a child and fueled his creativity when he first left his homeland.

C for Caves

Abdalla often spoke of his lifelong fascination with ancient caves and other wonders of natural history. He also used caves as symbols of refuge for those in exile.

L for Lettrism

Prior to becoming a visual artist, Abdalla trained as a calligrapher. He investigated the origins and role of writing in all its forms.

K for Klee

Abdalla’s fascination with western artists and European modernists really comes through in his depictions of his cultural roots. He was especially intrigued by Swiss German artist Paul Klee, and, even more particularly, by his painting Soil Consciousness.

The post Remembering Hamed Abdalla: The Pioneer of Egyptian Modernism and the “Creative Word” first appeared on Dornob.

In an effort to help refugees from Syria and other countries that traversed the Mediterranean to escape persecution, an art project called “Human Cargo” was initiated. The project hopes to help them heal from the terror they’ve endured and cope with the loss of family and friends they experienced along the way. It’s also hoped that the project will make more Germans sympathetic to their plight and inspire them to take proactive roles in the healing process.

Surviving Displacement

Human Cargo was organized by Malteser International, the worldwide relief agency of the Order of Malta that provides aid and support to internally dislocated people in Syria, as well as Syrian refugees all around the world. The project is located in Ahaus, a small town in western Germany. It was created by the refugees themselves, who methodically piled up wooden pallets used in the freight holds of cargo ships to form a large oval frame on the ground. Each person then placed handmade crosses and plaster tombstones in the center of the frame in honor of their lost loved ones.

Tales Of Terror And Trauma

A lot of these refugees recall being stacked like lumber on boats, five people stacked on top of one another so that the traffickers could make the most possible money. Each person paid between $1,700 and $4,500 for their spot on these boats — a sum commonly raised by up to 40 family members just to pay for a single person’s chance at asylum in Europe. Many others attempted to cross the sea in even smaller wooden boats and dinghies, praying and making phone calls in fear that they might never make it onto dry land.

When it comes to humanitarian crises like this one, the horror stories are endless. One group of men fled their homeland of Eritrea with their sisters. To save them from harm, the men told traffickers that the women were their wives. The traffickers saw through the ruse and retaliated by insisting that the men sleep with their “wives” to gain passage on the boats. When the men said no, the traffickers raped the women, several of whom discovered that they were pregnant when they arrived in Germany. Not long after learning the news, a few of these women committed suicide.

Hope Springs Eternal

Ines Ambaum, Human Cargo’s artistic director, explains that refugees “show different faces” depending on who they interact with and what they’re doing. Each screw they drilled into the project’s pallets brought back memories of their ghastly trip across the sea, but with each passing day they continue to speak and heal a little more. She notes: “When you think about the fact that the people who had to go through this are being attacked by xenophobes and chased through the streets in Germany — that’s like a second rape.”

Ambaum has high hopes going forward, citing the continually increased integration of Syrian refugees into German culture. She shared: “Ninety-eight percent of them are able to fully integrate! But no one’s reporting on that. It’s too positive for the press and doesn’t seem to match our country’s current mood. But it’s true. I see it every day.”

The post Human Cargo: Syrian Refugees Use Art to Ease Their Pain first appeared on Dornob.

As the perception of Syria changed over the years, Hafez’ art mirrored those changes. No longer did his work graphically reflect anger and frustration, but instead focused on the things that were lost. Today, he uses art to “creatively weep” for the demise of Syria’s architecture and historic customs, citing in particular the obliteration of a 1,200-year-old minaret and the demolition of structures previously regarded with Vatican-like respect. “I feel it’s my duty to be doing this work,” he says. “It’s not a privilege. It’s not a luxury. It’s a duty.”

Despite their abstract presentations, Hafez’ newer pieces exude remembrance of his home country. One sculpture showcases a tiny porcelain plate that Syrian neighbors commonly used to send each other food, while another works in some of the textiles worn by the county’s Jewish residents. Even the Greek and Roman elements that embellish certain works can be read as reminders of Syria’s diverse cultural influences.

Besides occasionally reading historical passages on the plight of his people, Hafez mostly prefers to stay anonymous at his exhibitions. Posing as just another face in the crowd, he roams around the venue, catching visitor comments here and there and snapping photos on his phone. He revealed in one interview: “I don’t want to speak. If I speak — if I open my mouth that I am a Muslim, Arab, Syrian immigrant — some of my audience would have already judged me three million ways, and they might close their ears or their hearts to my message. But I let the work speak on my behalf and I be a fly on the wall.”

For all that anonymity, Hafez’s success cannot be denied. In the past few months, his work has debuted to great reviews at a myriad of locations, including Rhode Island, Washington D.C., Maine, Connecticut, and the United Kingdom. His show at the Brooklyn Museum in New York is still on display, running until January 13th, 2019.

“Who wants to be known as [successful] on the corpse of his own nation and culture?” He asks rhetorically. “I would throw all of that in the garbage in a heartbeat and get three hours of our life back.”

Like many of his fellow displaced Syrians, Hafez finds it highly unlikely that he will be able to return to his homeland anytime soon — if ever. Even sadder is that as the dreams of going home slowly fade, they’re replaced by lingering memories full of love, life, and laughter. As he puts it: “You cannot format your heart and forget the past.”

The post Mohamad Hafez’s Art Commemorates Syria’s Magnificent History first appeared on Dornob.

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Mosul has suffered catastrophic damage since 2014, when ISIS chose the city’s Al-Nuri Grand Mosque as the place where they would declare the Islamic Caliphate. But as the conflict winds down and the streets grow quieter, residents are slowly moving back in, with thousands more expected to arrive soon enough. With so much of the city in ruins, the people who once thrived in Mosul now find themselves feeling like refugees in their own home. The Mosul Postwar Camp competition sought infrastructure that could shelter all the people who wished to return while their residences were being rebuilt.

Archstorming has divided refugees’ needs into two categories: “Urgent Humanitarian Aid,” which can reunite families and provide them with basic assistance and living spaces along the Tigris River, and the “City Reintegration Zone,” which aims to settle refugees back into society and help give them secure futures. Hundreds of architects and architecture students from all over the world participated in the competition, and the winners were announced in December of 2017.

Taking first prize is “Impulse,” which proposes a “new urban morphology” that can immediately accommodate refugees within a simple framework and indefinitely continue to grow, expand, and become more comfortable over time, adding both private and public units to itself as needed. Everyday life would go on right within the construction sites with minimal disturbance to residents.

The second prize winner is “Scaffolding City” by Quang Le, and third prize went to Zhao Yifan and Han Shuo for “Always Growing,” both of which employed similar flexible concepts.

“It is not a completely disturbed society as it is in refugee camps, because people in postwar camps have known the city where they were born,” says Le of Scaffolding City. “However, it is not the same as any social housing system because its social foundations and urban infrastructure may have been ruined. Therefore Mosul Postwar Camp needs to have flexibile, easy-to-change elements that are impermanent in shape but permanent in their ability to change. In the case of Mosul, this system should be able to infect, spread, and expand.”

“In the process, the camp itself would undertake the task of cleaning and rearranging the ruined parts of the city during the war. Thanks to this idea, we proposed a flexible model, which is not only a residence of the people, but also helps them to reform and repair their city systematically because the peoples here are the ones who understand their city better than anyone.”

One entry that didn’t quite win a major prize but caught a lot of attention for its unusual approach was the “New Babel Tower” by Kurtulus Göktas, Mohamed Abdellatif, and Demet Karabacak. This proposal creates a dialogue between the different people living both in the tower and in residential clusters surrounding it. The tower would serve as a temporary residence for refugees while their homes were being rebuilt and would stand as a war monument once it was no longer needed, referencing the city’s rich history in the same fertile crescent where the original Tower of Babel is said to have stood.

The post Winners of the Mosul Postwar Design Competition first appeared on Dornob.

The post Design for Refugees: New Dutch Exhibition Focuses on Survival first appeared on Dornob.

Badr’s sculptures are so poignant that they strike compassion into almost everyone who beholds them. After all, what could be more reminiscent of innocence and childhood than the pebbles on a beach? When they’re used to depict Syrian refugees leaving their homes and struggling to survive in foreign countries, the stones take on a tone of simultaneous hope and despair.

Many migrants lose their lives at sea. In a way, the seashore itself provides the perfect metaphor for life’s temporary nature: the tides ebb and flow, bringing water onto the shore for an instant only to take it away again. In recent years, images of refugees drifting in the middle of the ocean or enduring some other unimaginable hardship have become all too familiar. A woman cradling her child — dead, or still breathing? Families carrying the few belongings they have left in bundles on their backs. A man that’s been hanged. All of these events are really happening, but when we see them on the news every day, we become desensitized to these people’s pain and suffering.

The 52-year-old’s sculptures are simple enough for anyone to understand and remind us that these refugees are more than just clips and sound bytes. They’re human beings with their own sets of hopes, dreams, and fears. When combined with Kremer’s music and Kancheli’s animation, Badr’s art becomes a poetic tribute to the desperation and heroism shown by ordinary people in the face of a dangerous and extraordinary situation.

For the last 35 years, Badr has gone to the beach in his hometown of Latakia to collect pebbles of different shapes, colors, and sizes. Initially, it seems like he was the only person who even knew about his art! He told the BBC: “I didn’t have a camera to record any of my work. As soon as I finished, I looked at it for some time and then destroyed it to make a new one.”

Eventually, Nizar started gluing his tableaux onto cards. When glue became too expensive, he finally got his hands on a camera. He explains: “I take photos of the artwork. This is the only way to preserve them and make sure people will see them. My only consolation is the work I do and therefore I don’t see it as a source of revenue. It is pure passion for stone art. I want to communicate human emotions that people everywhere in the world share, such as love, hope, and sadness.”

Clearly, this visionary artist and sculptor has already inspired several others to help him tell the displaced Syrian people’s story. It looks like the French philosopher Blaise Pascal was right when he said “The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.”

The post Beach Pebble Sculptures Tell Refugee Stories first appeared on Dornob.

Since its inception in 1995, Core77 has served as a hub for creatives and designers of all ages and experience levels to get together and discuss their work as part of a global network. Core77 publishes articles, job listings, and portfolios online, hosts events and competitions, keeps an extensive design firm database, and organizes parties, lectures, and exhibits for design enthusiasts around the world to marvel in.

The company’s Design Awards were founded in 2011 with the aim of promoting innovation while simultaneously rewarding excellence. Participants can enter their projects into any of 14 categories, all of which are further broken up into “student” and “professional” classes. An international panel of design leaders selects the honorees and winners based on their use of integrity, insight, and intent in their respective fields.

The awards themselves were crafted by a design team in the form of functional molds. This way, the trophies can be used to make additional casts so that each member of the winning teams receives an individual honor for their efforts. The trophy is meant to embody the spirit of collaboration and team-based design.

How it Works

This year, Core77 recruited 54 panelists from 15 countries to determine the award winners. These jurors were then divided into teams of three or four to vote amongst the 14 categories. The categories are as follows: Built Environment, Commercial Equipment, Consumer Product, Design Concept, Design Education Initiative, Design for Social Impact, Furniture and Lighting, Interaction, Open Design, Packaging, Service Design, Strategy and Research, Transportation, and Visual Communication. In each category, awards are given at the Student, Notable, Runner-Up, and Winner levels, though all the honorées are featured on the Core77 website.

Our Favorite 2017 Winners

Visual Communication Award: Google Wayfinding

Google’s Kirkland campus was set to undergo a dramatic expansion in 2016, and the new designs for their directory signs took home the Core77 Visual Communication Award for their reflection of the company’s belief that content should stimulate all five of the human senses. These textural and vibrant 4-D signs also utilize natural lighting to alter their appearance as the days and seasons go by.

Transportation Award: VOLTA

Pure Cycles has designed a revolutionary lightweight bicycle that can be used to traverse the bustle of inner cities. The bike can travel up to 40 miles on a single charge, reach a top speed of 20 mph, and boasts a clean, minimalist aesthetic that hides its electronic nature. Thanks to its integrated lights that switch on automatically when it’s dark out, intelligent brake signaling, and computerized display that indicates speed and charge level, the VOLTA is now the smartest e-bike on the market.

Built Environment Award: The Guesthouse Project

Last year, the Guesthouse Project was conducted in Melbourne, Australia to investigate the ways that design could influence social cohesion at the local level. Full-scale pop-up structures were designed and constructed for refugees to live and celebrate their native communities through music, food, and social gatherings in. The experiment proved to be a smash-hit and went on to win third place in the Austrailian Design Journal’s list of top seven projects of 2016.

Consumer Product Award: Suzy Snooze

Bleepbleeps is changing the way that traditional baby monitors watch over our little ones. The quirky “Suzy Snooze” device uses advanced digital technology to help both babies and parents get a better night’s sleep. Suzy plays comforting music to your baby when she hears them crying, doubles as a warm LED nightlight, and teaches toddlers to stay in bed with her innovative “sleep training” function. The best part is, all of Suzy’s features can be controlled through an easy-to-use app. Bleepbleeps is even developing technology that will eventually allow parents to monitor their child’s sleeping patterns!

The post Coverage: Core77 Design Awards first appeared on Dornob.

A new museum in Palestine is finally opening its doors to the public. The Palestinian Museum is located in Birzeit, Palestine and was designed by Irish architecture firm Heneghan Peng. The museum is the flagship project of the local Taawon Welfare Association, which works to support marginalized communities in Gaza and the people living in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. In 2011, Heneghan Peng won an international competition for their idea of creating a “museum hub” in an area just 25km north of Jerusalem. The completion of the impressive 3,500 square meter museum and its surrounding 40,000 square meters of landscaping is just the first of a two-phase master plan.

Ultimately, the design team hopes to tie the museum to the land around it by drawing on the rich history embedded into the terraces on which the building now sits. The architects explain, “The landscape of the Palestine has the ‘worked’ quality of a city; every element of it has been touched and tells a story of intervention, production, culture, environment, and commerce.” Palestine has obviously had a very complex historical narrative, and the museum’s development is intended to honor its diverse culture and more accurately tell its story to the public.

The building respects the existing nature of the terrain: it undulates sharply, following the kinks inherent to the topography and replicating it in parts to create a direct link between architecture and nature. A series of terraces, all made from field stone walls that trace the shapes of the area’s original agricultural structures, unfold in a cascade down the hill that the building sits on top of. Plantations of fruit-bearing trees, vegetables, grains, and flowers grow in these terraces and fill the spaces with lush olives, pomegranates, figs, apricots, almonds, carobs, walnuts, wheat, chickpeas, mint, za’atar, sage, chamomile, jasmine, and lavender. The plants closest to the museum are almost entirely domesticated species while the plants in further away terraces become increasingly wild. This concept was also conceived of as a way of faithfully recounting the Palestinian story, says Heneghan Peng: “The cascade of terraces tells a diversity of stories, citrus brought in through trade routes, native aromatic herbs, a rich and varied landscape with connections east and west.”

The museum itself is spread over two similar volumes which contain exhibition spaces, cafés, research facilities, classrooms, and an outdoor amphitheater. The building’s facade is covered in a neutral limestone that is native to the region, which makes the entire structure look like it’s rising out of the ground and allows it to seamlessly blend in with the paving slabs on the floor and the nearby auditorium.

In May 2016, The Palestinian Museum first opened, albeit without any exhibits. This alone should serve as a testament to the importance of the actual building regardless of what’s inside of it.  Recently, the museum proudly announced its first calendar of events and exhibitions for the 2017 – 2018 year. The inaugural program will consist of five major exhibits and will see a number of exciting digital projects come to fruition. The museum is expected to fully open in September 2017, when it will be showcasing art that explores the representations of Jerusalem as a global city over the past fifty years.

The post New Palestinian Museum Reaches Completion first appeared on Dornob.