Iyad Naja forms metal and concrete calligraphy stools for Dubai Design Week

During the inaugural edition of Dubai Design Week, from October 26–31, 2015, the O’de Rose shop — a local boutique offering clothing, accessories, decor and artworks hosts an exhibition of contemporary furniture that riffs on the theme through a use of innovative materials, manufacturing methods and mélange between heritage and contemporary.

For the exhibition, Beirut-based creative Iyad Naja brings a series of stools that interweave traditional motifs with modern material technologies. Naja uses mediums like concrete and metal, typically deemed as architectural and weighty elements, to uncharacteristically convey a harmonious and organic quality.

For a set of stools, a composition of overlapping Arabic calligraphy is sculpted into sinuous rings and interwoven into rounded concrete bases. Three metallic variations — gold, black and rose gold — illustrate an abstracted and graphic interpretation of calligraphic forms, with spaces carved out from the metal sheet. These apertures pierce the skin of each stool, revealing multiple layers and characters, while allowing light to subtly pass through.

Iyad Naja forms metal and concrete calligraphy stools for Dubai Design Week