The 4 Themes of The Hanger Exhibition at Amman Design Week 2019
Amman, Jordan
The Hanger Exhibition, curated by Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop, featured the work of over fifty designers from the Middle East and North Africa for Amman Design Week 2019 Edition.
The curator urged designers to investigate new materials and aesthetic possibilities. New fields of creation emerged to imagine a different future, from the scale of the city to that of the object, enabling different ways of interacting and living. Four subjects emerged in response to the theme of “possibilities”: material research, territorial explorations, narratives of the city, and weaving.
Here are some highlights from the Hanger Exhibition 2019 on these 4 themes:
Material Research
“From loose gravel to jameed, materials are reconsidered away from the standard modus operandi – their application and uses rethought and molded into architecture, furniture, or edible sculptures”
Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop
Soils of Jordan by Atlal Collective
This work is designed to last for the duration of the exhibition. Nine columns, each composed of soils found in different parts of Jordan, are placed on a platform. Each column is constructed using a rammed earth building technique and is set in stratified layers, reflecting a distinct color and texture.
Soils of Jordan by Atlal Collective – Photography by Edmund Sumner 
Soils of Jordan by Atlal Collective – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
Soils of Jordan by Atlal Collective – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week
Untitled by Sahel Alhiyari
This work explores one of many possibilities that puts together, or joins, separate yet familiar elements in a new body. It is a direct reflection of how we perceive and conceive that which surrounds us.
Untitled by Sahel Alhiyari – Photography by Edmund Sumner 
Untitled by Sahel Alhiyari – Photography by Edmund Sumner 
Untitled by Sahel Alhiyari – Photography by Edmund Sumner
Amoud by AAU ANASTAS
The stone column is made out of collected stone architectural ruins. The different stone elements come from different periods of time and illustrate different techniques of construction.The stones were geometrically analyzed and through stereotomy research, interfaces between the stone elements were created in order to build this structure.
Amoud by AAU ANASTAS – Photography by Edmund Sumner 
Amoud by AAU ANASTAS – Photography by Edmund Sumner 
Amoud by AAU ANASTAS – Photography by Edmund Sumner
Territorial Explorations
“Landscapes are not only considered as a romantic backdrop for tourism and leisure but also as a source of resources and new ways of living; territory becoming home and soil creating columns. “
Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop.
The Canyon Walls by Rasem Kamal
The Canyon Walls are a series of freestanding curvilinear partitions inspired by the Jordanian Siq, or naturally formed canyon. These walls are arranged to create a narrow passage, a sanctuary where people can disconnect and experience moments of spatial expansion and compression.
The Canyon Walls by Rasem Kamal – Photography by Rasem Kamal 
The Canyon Walls by Rasem Kamal – Photography by Rasem Kamal 
The Canyon Walls by Rasem Kamal – Photography by Rasem Kamal
TOPOGRAPHY AS HOUSE by Studio Anne Holtrop
This installation is a model of cast pigmented gypsum that records and fixates the reliefs within the sand. Represented at a 1:10 scale, the reliefs are imagined as the setting for a possible house, one where within the topography a bedroom, a dining room or a bathroom are nestled between the contours of the land. This constructed and imagined landscape seeks to re-question our often romantic relationship to landscape in architecture by suggesting a more direct and physical relationship to site and land.
TOPOGRAPHY AS HOUSE by Studio Anne Holtrop – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
TOPOGRAPHY AS HOUSE by Studio Anne Holtrop – Photography by Edmund Sumner 
TOPOGRAPHY AS HOUSE by Studio Anne Holtrop – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week
Saha by Saba Innab
“Saha” is a constellation constructed through the spatial and symbolic definers of the Hashemite Plaza; the Amphitheater, the arcades of Saqf el Seil Street (Quraysh St.), and the invisible body of water.
Saha by Saba Innab – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
Saha by Saba Innab – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
Saha by Saba Innab – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week
Narratives in the City
“A growing interest in mapping, drawing, and chronicling cities in the Middle East could bely the difficulty in dealing with their exponential and often chaotic growth. It is an acknowledgment that the city is increasingly being understood, not only as an accumulation of data but also as a juxtaposition of stories and narratives: some personal, others shared.”
Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop.
Amman ya Amman by Nadine Zaza and Sama El Saket
This work explores the complex narratives of five individuals, Ahmad, Hala, Zaina, Jamila and Abu Rashid who are all living in Amman. Each character navigates and experiences the city in varied ways. The comic style elicits the collective imaginations of the city and how each character understands their future within it.
Amman ya Amman by Nadine Zaza and Sama El Saket – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
Amman ya Amman by Nadine Zaza and Sama El Saket – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
Amman ya Amman by Nadine Zaza and Sama El Saket – Photography courtesy of the designers
Bananatopia by Farida Khaled
The initial idea of Bananatopia is to map the city of Cairo through the lens of segregation and social differences. An item of everyday use, the banana, was chosen as a medium to map this issue by surveying its different varieties and prices in Cairo’s main neighborhoods. This change in price and type reveals the huge differences between the districts in Cairo.
Bananatopia by Farida Khaled – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
Bananatopia by Farida Khaled – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
Bananatopia by Farida Khaled – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week
GROUNDPLAN DRAWINGS by Foundland Collective
The initial idea of Bananatopia is to map the city of Cairo through the lens of segregation and social differences. An item of everyday use, the banana, was chosen as a medium to map this issue by surveying its different varieties and prices in Cairo’s main neighborhoods. This change in price and type reveals the huge differences between the districts in Cairo.
GROUNDLAND DRAWINGS by Foundland Collective – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
GROUNDLAND DRAWINGS by Foundland Collective – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week
Weaving
“Millennial crafts such as weaving are being revitalized, and goat hair, wool, and palm fronds are spinning different interpretations of shelter against the backdrop of increasingly hostile environments.”
Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop.
Stone Weave and rho (p) by Khalid/Norma
Stone Weave is a coffee table composed of 2000 hand-sawed, polished, and woven pieces of stone. The stone slab is reduced into smaller threaded units interlaced with metal threads, forming a weaving system that is similar to the process of weaving a carpet, where the weave has no limit.
rho (p) is composed of a core and an outer shell. The core is made out of an assembly of 1000 hand-sawed stone pieces and covered with a polished stainless steel shell.
Stone Weave and rho (p) by Khalid/Norma – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
Stone Weave by Khalid/Norma – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
rho (p) by Khalid/Norma – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week
Meeting Points by Abeer Seikaly
Meeting Points is a working prototype for a reconfigurable composite material system, a tensility and equilibrium of steel, wood, and fiber only made possible through each individual connection and the intuitive hands that created them. These different meeting points – between fiber and structure, material and space – arise in response to the design processes of Bedouin tent-making craft.
Meeting Points by Abeer Seikaly – Photography by Edmund Sumner 
Meeting Points by Abeer Seikaly – Photography by Edmund Sumner 
Meeting Points by Abeer Seikaly – Photography courtusey of Amman Design Week
The Woven Mashrabiya by Hadeel Ayed Mohammad
The Woven Mashrabiya is a reinterpretation of the traditional Mashrabiya facade elements. It explores the possibilities of translating this historical craft into a contemporary modular system. The modular system allows endless possibilities for assembly at different scales and configurations. By using light-weight materials, the modules can be arranged to create various forms of enclosures, planar facades, partitions and shading canopies.This allows the system to re-adapt to different locations.
The Woven Mashrabiya by Hadeel Ayed Mohammad – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
The Woven Mashrabiya by Hadeel Ayed Mohammad – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week 
The Woven Mashrabiya by Hadeel Ayed Mohammad – Photography courtesy of Amman Design Week
