The fourth edition of Beirut Design Week – which has been bringing the best national and international design to the capital since 2012 – closed its doors on last Sunday. The festival represented an actual dialogue between professionals, students and design lovers: the 2015 theme,“Social Beings”, brought under the spotlight many different topics such as creative economy, cultural interchange, design social impact and design entrepreneurship. Organized by the no-profit association MENA Design Research Center and mainly hosted at the Beirut Souks, the shopping mecca of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut Design Week has been an effective effort toward promoting a new idea and understanding of design, by supporting a new kind of research as well as multidisciplinary projects across the whole region.

One of the main events of the 8 day festival was the International Conference, where renowned local designers and academics interacted with the representatives of the world’s most famous brands such as IBM, Philips, Bang & Olfusen, Domus Academy e Parsons New York. Among the exhibitions listed in the program, “The Makers”, aimed at emphasizing the importance of a inclusive design by suggesting the potential of digital production in order to make common public get close to design. Just like the past years, the festival livened up the entire city with over 150 events hosted in 100 different venues, for a total of more than 25,000 visitors from all over the world. Beirut Design Week confirmed to be the largest design festival of the whole Middle East and North Africa region, as proved by this year’s important international partners such as Danish, Finnish and Dutch embassies.

INFO: www.beirutdesignweek.org

PHOTO COURTESY: Beirut Design Week; Boudy Nasrala; Nisrine Sarkis; Infographic.li; Dubai DesignDistrict; @theobaf