Material Matters: Experiments in the Built Environment

"Material Matters: Experiments in the Built Environment" brings together key thinkers from architecture, design, and the visual arts to explore how innovations in materials and design are shaping the future of our cities in a time of environmental flux. The symposium is commissioned by EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) and conceptualized by waiwai and Art Jameel as venue partner, with endorsement from the UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth.

In light of a global imperative to reduce emission footprints and waste creation, architects, artists, and designers are increasingly looking to vernacular architecture and local landscapes as sources of knowledge and renewable materials. Their aim is to create context-responsive environments that work with local climates, landscapes, and cultural habits, including engineering with algae, building with salt, and seeing the city as a classroom.

Using both site-specific research and speculative experimentation, speakers at this symposium urge a return to the vernacular and the local, anchored around four key approaches: ​enabling sustainable production through bioregions and local materials, supporting civic engagement through new urban pedagogies, reflecting historical narratives through the  built environment, and impacting global expertise through regional design.

The speakers are architect Daniel Bell (Atelier LUMA); architect, artist, and activist Axel Timm (raumlabor); artist Jasmin Werner; designers Tymon Hogenelst and Jesse van der Ploeg (Studio Wild); curator of the National Pavilion UAE La Biennale di Venezia at the Biennale Architettura 2023, Faysal Tabbarah (American University of Sharjah); and NYU Abu Dhabi professors and members of the NYUAD Anthropocene Research Kitchen Katia Arfara and Dale Hudson.

EUNIC, the European Union National Institutes for Culture, is the European network of organizations engaging in cultural relations. Together with their partners, they bring to life European cultural collaboration in more than one hundred countries worldwide with a network of 136 clusters, drawing on the broad experience of their members from all EU Member States and associate countries. EUNIC advocates a prominent role of culture in international relations and is a strategic partner of the EU, actively involved in the further definition of European cultural policy. EUNIC is a platform for knowledge sharing and for capacity building amongst its members and partners.

Art Jameel supports artists and creative communities. Founded and supported by the Jameel family philanthropies, the independent organization is headquartered in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and works globally. Art Jameel's programmes—across exhibitions, commissions, research, learning, and community building—are grounded in a dynamic understanding of the arts as fundamental to life and accessible to all. Art Jameel's two institutions—Hayy Jameel, a dedicated complex for the arts and creativity in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Jameel Arts Centre, an innovative contemporary institution in Dubai, UAE—are complemented by digital initiatives plus collaborations with major institutional partners and a network of practitioners across the world.

waiwai is an architectural, landscape, urban, interior, and graphic design studio with offices in Dubai and Tokyo. Led by Wael Al Awar and Kazuma Yamao, waiwai takes a highly contextual approach to address social, environmental, and technological questions through design. waiwai’s research focuses on strategies and materials that can form a new vocabulary for the climate crisis, one that responds to specific cultural contexts and environmental urgency.