Last week I wasn’t posting as much since I was taking two workshops at the Nuqat design conference, a furniture design workshop from 9AM to 1PM followed by a fashion design workshop from 2PM to 6PM. They both turned out to be a lot of fun and the whole experience was memorable.
Furniture Design: Defy the Existing Function
The furniture design workshop was done in collaboration with IKEA and was run by the award winning furniture designer Younes Duret. It was basically an IKEA hack workshop in which we had to repurpose one product out of the 35 they had made available to us. There were around 26 people taking the workshop with many of the participants coming in from around the region to take part. The final work was pretty astounding since there were quite a bunch talented people taking part.
Fashion Design: Fashion Meets Technology
The second workshop I took part in involved wearable technology and as a geek/designer I wanted to see if there was anything I could possibly bring to the table. The workshop was run by the super talented Sarah Hermez of the non profit fashion school, Creative Space. While the furniture design workshop was held at the Sadu House, the fashion design workshop was held at Fab Lab. What is Fab Lab? Fab Lab is part of MIT’s Fab Foundation and the Kuwait Fab Lab is part of the world wide network which spans 30 countries. It’s a ridiculously cool place where you can go fabricate products as well as take part in educational workshops (all for free). They have 3D printers, CNC machines, laser cutters, a robotics lab and even an in house patent registration office. I’m actually going to post a separate post about them since the place is just insane. After experimenting with different technologies over the four days, for my final project I ended up creating a fashionable and functional pair of mountaineering boots that came with a built in frostbite detector (pictured above). I also just for the experience learned how to drape a dress which if you were following me on snapchat you would have gotten a glimpse of my undeniable talent in making sexy dresses.
The Nuqat workshops were filled with positive energy and I got to meet a lot of people and learn quite a bit. I’ll definitely be taking part again next year although most likely I’ll take just one workshop next time since two was just too exhausting.
