Exhibition: Kursi, curated by Sandra Tinari

Kursi, meaning chair in Arabic, was a six week design challenge and exhibition developed and curated by Sandra Tinari for Dubai Design Week. Kursi explored chair design, in partnership with renowned Swiss design house, Vitra, taking inspiration from Vitra’s iconic Panton chair to launch new ideas and consider the future of chair design. The exhibition was created for Dubai’s new arts and design university, DIDI.

As Vitra’s Panton celebrated its 50th Anniversary, DIDI’s students and faculty infused heritage with alternative approaches to create prototypes of chairs that have been designed for new generations. Among a wide selection of designs, view a limited-edition Chrome Panton, a chair made entirely of repurposed materials and mini prototypes 3D printed live!

Dubai Design Week Exhibition

The collaboration aimed for designers to seek inspiration from the detailed and iterative design process, which resulted in the creation of Vitra’s Panton chair.

The remit of the design challenge was to explore alternative approaches to chair design. The select number of the pieces created for the competition were be exhibited at Dubai Design Week in Kursi, which showcased the DIDI student works, as well as Vitra’s limited edition Panton chairs, Chrome and Glow, developed especially to mark the chair’s 50th anniversary.

Vitra has a longstanding reputation for working with great designers to create innovative products, many of which have become furniture icons – the Eames chairs are probably the best known, but Vitra is responsible for many concepts whose look and feel are instantly recognisable.

Verber Panton

The story of the Panton chair illustrates this perfectly. Verner Panton is still regarded as one of Denmark’s most influential furniture and interior designers from the second half of the last century; Arne Jacobsen, with whom he worked in the 1950s, is another key name. Panton was an innovative designer, responsible for the Cardboard House and the Plastic House among his many designs. And towards the end of the 1950s he produced a series of increasingly radical designs for chairs, culminating in the first ever single-form injection-moulded plastic chair.

On completion of Dubai Design Week, Kursi, was relocated to the Mall of Emirates for a two-week exhibition in the main halls.