CAIRO: Consultant, architect and professor of interior design, Amr Abdel Kawi wants to change the design scene in Egypt.
Through his company Rhimal and Magaz magazine, Abdel Kawi attempts to restore what he sees as Egypt’s rich aesthetic tradition while closing the gap between designers’ visions and industrialists’ products.
“Why are we [Egypt] not participating in global design? We have one of the oldest ongoing traditions of design in the world, it never stopped …Now we’re not participating, there are no publications, no taste, no quality. You see in our industry horrible physical environments, no aesthetic. It’s not that we’re missing talent, or people, or infrastructure, he said.
What’s missing, according to Abdel Kawi, is the discourse between the designer, the producer and the market.
To re-establish interaction requires several tactics; as he says, “If you’re trying to solve a problem, you examine its various dimensions, then you devise the appropriate approach.
Magaz, a monthly design publication in English and Arabic, establishes a platform to encourage designers to innovate while showcasing their work to potential buyers and raising the profile of design in Egypt.
Training is equally important: Rhimal is currently conducting its second round of furniture design workshops, building on a successful debut last year at the International Furniture Show in Milan as well as at Furnex, a local export-directed furniture fair supported by the Egyptian Export Council that resulted in several young designers signing contracts.
This year Rhimal partnered with the Istituo Eueropeo di Design (IED) to bring four international designers work with 20 young Egyptian designers on a series of workshops to create designs for this year’s fair. Four groups of five young designers spent five days with an international guest designer, working on the prototype of a piece of furniture as specified by the partnering company, which include such names as Mobica, Sirowood, and French Home.
Prior to brainstorming, all the designers visited the production facilities of the company in order to design for the equipment and resources available to manufacture the finished product.
After receiving his education as an architect at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, Abdel Kawi returned to Egypt to teach. After 18 years at Ain Shams University and some time at the Arab Institute, he is currently on faculty at the American University in Cairo.
Of his willingness to think outside the box, Abdel Kawi says, “I became involved in education through a government institution. I came in as an outsider. So I was not totally assimilated and had a critical approach.
He believes that decades of market isolation have handicapped industry in Egypt, in particular its ability to respond to shifting tastes and fashions.
“Companies did not have to compete to sell their products. or to spend money on a design team in order to create market competitive goods.
Kawi expresses optimism that this attitude is changing. “Companies have been coming to us, which we did not expect. We thought that we would have to work to convince them. But they have been coming to us, asking for help.
More than playing matchmaker between a likely designer and a company looking to hire, Rhimal has to train companies and designers how to work together. This disconnect between a designer’s vision and a company’s wants and capabilities, he explains, is industry-wide, not specific to Egypt.
“The international designers get really excited about what we’re doing in the workshops. They say they’ve never done anything like this degree of cooperation, he adds.
Abdel Kawi explains that the current focus on industrial production has garnered government support for Rhimal’s objective, the true achievement of which, an internationally respected style of Egyptian design, he ultimately considers beyond the capabilities of a single company like Rhimal. This year’s design workshops were conducted in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and housed in the attractive Al-Foustat Craft Center.
He adds, “The Industrial Modernization Center (IMC) funds some of our activities through its design section, which it uses to help companies with design. It used to only offer assistance through modernized machinery, for example, but has now started to see the impact of new design.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry is also interested: “We can’t compete with China on cost, we [Egyptian producers] have explored every road except this one [innovative design]. To create a unique Egyptian design ‘language’.
He went on, “To discuss Arabesque doors is oversimplifying it, because that is only on the level of imagery. We need a more sophisticated language, we need to answer the question of how to do contemporary design in our ‘language.’ This is a difficult formula, it requires introspection.to put our fingers on the essence of who we are.
“This is the difference between art and design: with art, regardless of whether it sells, you have expressed something and therefore achieved your purpose and communicated something. For design, the intention cannot be fulfilled until the design is realized and produced and used. This involves working with parts of the process the designer doesn’t control.
Asked about the challenges of entrepreneurship in Egypt, he responded, “With my growing up and education outside Cairo, I asked myself ‘why would I settle here?’ It’s because of the challenge, because it is more meaningful to address these challenges than to go build a foreign building.
This article is the first in a monthly series on promising entrepreneurs that will run in Daily News Egypt in collaboration with Endeavor Egypt. Endeavor is an international non-profit organization promoting high impact entrepreneurship in emerging countries as the leading force for sustainable economic development.
