Celebrating One Year of Designing
As we mark the one year anniversary of Design VIbes, I am filled with immense pride and gratitude. What began as a dream has transformed into a thriving reality, thanks to the support of our brand partners, working partners, clients and the vibrant spirit of the diverse community in Dubai. This milestone is not just a celebration of our success but also a testament to the power of passion, creativity, perseverance and most importantly, the blessings of Allah.
Launching an interior design consultancy in a city as dynamic and fast-paced as Dubai was both an exciting and daunting endeavour. From the outset, our goal was to create spaces that not only reflect the unique tastes and commercial demands of our clients but also encapsulate their innovative essence.
Our journey began with a few ambitious enquiries and a vision to redefine interior design in the region. Over the past year, we have had the privilege of working on a diverse range of projects, from stylish exhibition stands to modern and sophisticated offices. Each project has been an opportunity to push the boundaries of creativity and bring our clients' visions to life.
As we celebrate this significant milestone, we are more committed than ever to delivering exceptional design solutions. The coming year promises even more exciting projects, collaborations and opportunities to innovate. Our focus will remain on creating spaces that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also functional and sustainable.
As a female entrepreneur in Dubai, I am especially grateful for what we have achieved in such a short time. Our success is a reminder that with passion, dedication and a bit of courage, any dream can be turned into reality.
By the will of Allah, we have another year of creativity, innovation and accessible designs ahead of us.
Thank you for being part of our journey.
With warmest regards,
Hina Kidwai
Founder & Design Director
Trend Forecasting for Academic Spaces
“Don’t try to follow trends. Create them.”
- Simon Zingerman
Technology-Led Education
Learning environments are undergoing a drastic transformation and with the growing technological and spatial impact on educational models, as students become more engaged in technologically enabled learning and educators rethink the ways of teaching using technology as an integrated part, spaces need to be re-designed with the various application requirements.
In view of the current devastating global outbreak of the novel coronavirus and its subsequent effect on education, new ways of learning and educating are making the educators and students more technology friendly, which will be carried forward to the phase when they will be going back to their institutions, but by then their needs would have changed.
Active Learning
Research has shown that the learning environment has physical, social and cognitive effect on students and their performance. Active learning is the keyword here. Earlier the classrooms were designed to accommodate lecture mode, but now the educator has become more of a facilitator and the stress is more on individual focused study, collaborative group projects, and brain-storming sessions. All these require students to be creative and innovative. They need to keep changing their posture and should have inspiring spaces around them. Technology needs to be in-built in the space to facilitate online gathering and sharing of information, one to one interaction requires separate space dividers, and students need to take rejuvenation breaks for which they require wider corridors with setups enabling them to do so.
The space design should support student engagement. Academic spaces need to be flexible, multi-purpose, each space needs to be broken down into different zones to cater to different posture-change requirement.
Providing these Active learning classrooms has measurable improvement in grades as well as enhancing their skill sets for critical analysis, problem solving and innovative thinking.
Reinventing Classrooms
Over the past few years the importance of having breakout spaces outside the classroom has been accepted as essential design requirement, this will be increasingly implemented to promote peer to peer interaction-led learning. The furniture provided in these areas need to have inbuilt technology for ease of internet access as well as have charging facility.
Small pockets of different posture setting will need to be provided for students to change seamlessly between different modes of learning. Every student needs a dedicated space, but several zones can be set up for groups, reading, and classmate gatherings. It surrounds the space offering different choices from where one can work. Classrooms to have mobile and height adjustable tables with technology access, high tables with stools to have quick ideation sessions, video-conferencing enabled furniture with capability to display multiple screens for project work, social settings in corridors, banquettes and workbenches provide convenient places for last-minute class preparation or to quickly debrief with a faculty member or fellow student afterwards. Writable walls to allow spontaneous learning. These spaces would need to be designed and furnished for maximum versatility.
The Way Ahead for Academic Spaces
The coming years will witness a revolution in the way knowledge is transferred and embodied, which will trigger the need to reboot the educational spaces to accommodate the rapid rise and inclusion of technology.
The new way of learning and designing will bring together the best of technology-empowered learning into bricks and mortar institutions. The outcomes can be positively impacting, for teachers as well as their students. The design and furnishings of educational spaces would also be crucial to their success, both to support new models of education as well as to attract high-calibre students and faculty.
This brings us to conclude that the new-age academic design will have synergy between space, pedagogy and technology.