Mona El Hallak is an architect and heritage preservation activist, currently the director of the AUB Neighborhood Initiative whose aim is to support Ras Beirut’s livability, vitality and diversity, while promoting critical citizenship among the AUB community. She led several campaigns and succeeded in the preservation of the Barakat Building - now Beit Beirut, the museum of memory of the city. She is an active member of Beirut Madinati, a political movement that started as an electoral campaign for the 2016 Beirut municipal elections; and a founding member of two NGOs: IRAB for the preservation of the Arab world’s musical heritage; and ZAKIRA for promoting photography and its role in documenting and preserving memory. In 2013, she was given the Ordre National du Mérite au grade de Chevalier from the French Republic in recognition of her achievements in preserving the architectural and cultural heritage of Beirut.

Katrie is the founder of Urban Curiosity, a two year research project to learn about cities through five different lenses: Density, Affordability, Liveability, Sustainability, and Technology. She is a civil engineer of seven years with experience in both Australian and Chinese water and urban infrastructure sectors. Passionate about creating sustainable integrated cities, and  working to inspire those around me to lead and foster collaboration. She aims to coordinate diverse disciplines into an integrated outcome. She is currently on a two year sabbatical from her role at AECOM to run the Urban CurioCity project.

Katrie is a former Prime Minister's Australia-Asia Endeavour Award Fellow, ACC-Austcham Young Leaders Scholar, and inaugural Australia China Youth Dialogue and China-Australia Millennial Project delegate. She has presented papers at the Singapore International Water Week Conference and International Water Sensitive Urban Design Conference, and is the recipient of the UDIA NSW Roy Sheargold Scholarship, which has allowed her to go on this journey.

Tanja Rosenqvist is a designer turned transdisciplinary researcher and international development practitioner. She has a keen interest in public service innovation and governance in both low- and high-income countries and believe design can provide great value in these contexts. For the past 8 years, Tanja has has conducted in-depth design research in a range of contexts; from public hospitals in Denmark, to private homes in Poland, rural villages in Ethiopia, market places in Cambodia and Vietnam and local governments and communities in Indonesia. She is particularly passionate about the use of design methods to create social and/or political change and to improve public service provision by involving, often unheard and vulnerable population groups, in research and design processes.

Joanna is a social design practitioner, researcher, speaker and lecturer with 15 years of experience in the UK and Lebanon. She is the Design Director at Uscreates, a London-based consultancy pioneering innovative work to improve health and wellbeing through design. They regularly work with governments on projects such as http://www.carecity.london/ and https://mayorschallenge.bloomberg.org/. 

Joanna completed a PhD in design for social integration at the University of the Arts London. Alongside research and practice.  She is an associate lecturer at the University of the Arts London, Kingston University and Ravensbourne University, and a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA).

Every year, Beirut Design Week shines a spotlight on independent and emerging regional designers, giving them a platform to present their work to the local and international design community. Since 2012, many designers who have shown at the opening night of BDW have gone on to become major names on the design scene, both in Lebanon and worldwide.

Bigger and bolder in scope than ever before, our 2018 opening-night exhibition will be one of the headline events of BDW, giving featured designers an unparalleled platform to present their products and ideas to the Lebanon design audience, leading industry experts, global design media, and thousands of design lovers from across the world.

For this year’s exhibition on 22 June, BDW has joined forces with Adorno – an international digital gallery and sales platform for collectible design – and local manufacturing company Fabraca Studios, giving participating designers the chance to feature in Adorno’s first curated Beirut design collection, as well as technical and manufacturing support from Fabraca Studios.

Beit Beirut

Opening: 5 PM 

Open throughout BDW from 11 AM to 9 PM

Co-curated by Public Works Studio and Beirut Design Week, the Forum on Cities and Designers is a platform where designers engaged with urban issues are invited to critically reflect on their practice. Through an exhibition, panels and workshops, the Forum will focus on questions of representation (tools, methods, politics) and production (positionality, labor, ethics) in design and research.

The Forum departs from a recognition that any urban design activity dialectically engages/produces three social spaces: 

First, the disciplinary space of the studio or office, equipped with its particular tools of representation and production. We are referring here to drawings, designs, and decisions made by “experts” (i.e. architects, engineers, designers, government planning officials and others)

Second, the space of the design and planning intervention (its site, immediate, and wider context). This is a space that is continuously evolving through environmental changes, social relations, and access to resources.

Third, the space of the positioned self, namely the designer’s positionality within economic, political, professional and social realms. Positionality plays a central role in the designer’s relation to his/her site and stakeholders and consequently in how design is approached, thought of and practiced.

The aim of the Forum is to understand design as a practice that is produced by the interaction between these three spaces and the actors that inhabit them respectively. As such, the material presented is a product of the various voices, networks, processes and economies that surround it.

Beit Beirut

Opening: 5 PM 

Open throughout BDW from 11 AM to 9 PM

Beit Beirut

Opening: 5 PM 

Open throughout BDW from 11 AM to 9 PM

Beit Beirut

Opening: 5 PM 

Open throughout BDW from 11 AM to 9 PM

Beit Beirut

5 PM