INDEX 2011 Student Challenge Dubai UAE, 3 of 3

The INDEX Student Challenge encourages the development of creative talent beyond the classroom. DMG, ISG and tasmena, with the support of and in cooperation with participating academic institutions, present an opportunity for students to exercise their design and development skills in addition to their leadership and teamwork abilities. Emphasis is placed on cross-campus networking and interaction with industry professionals.

The INDEX 2011 Student Challenge tasked post-secondary students within the UAE with identifying a locally available ‘waste’ material and proposing an interior design solution for its reuse. Ten post-secondary academic institutions and over 150 students participated in the INDEX 2011 Student Challenge Interior Design Competition. From these, eight institutions and 64 students were given the opportunity to showcase their designs at the INDEX Exhibition and compete for the top prize. The three finalist designs were from Manipal University Dubai Campus the American University of Sharjah and Zayed University Dubai Campus.

The finalists share their project details and a description of the INDEX experience with you in their own words, below.

What material did you choose to reuse and why? 

EPS refers to Expanded Polystyrene, which is more commonly known as: Styrofoam. We can find EPS in different forms such as installation panels, packaging products, drinking cups and lunch boxes. Despite being banned by international fast food restaurants, it is still being used by most of UAE local cafeterias. The awareness and the care for the environmental impact of using this material is rare. After contacting some factories that produce EPS products, we couldn't find any factory that is specialized in recycling EPS foam boxes used in UAE restaurants. When we learnt that it takes about 500 years for one EPS cup to dissolve, this encouraged us even more to find a new solution for this material in a useful way.

What's your design concept? And what's its positive environmental impact? 

Following many experiments, we found a new material that can be created from EPS boxes applying heat and pressure. After putting the material in an oven for 20 minutes, the material can be shaped in any way we want, creating a new, firm and hard material, which is connected by heat only and producing a shiny, light attracting surface. This moment, highlights the starting point of our concept “beauty” and the ability of turning something that had been declared as waste and therefore has lost its previous purpose into something that can look appealing and fulfill a new function at the same time.
The end product of this process was a chandelier.

How is "reuse" relevant to you as a designer? 

As a team, we believe that reuse should be always a choice with priority in interior design. Reuse does not only influence the design and its concept, but also creates an environment where growth is ongoing, thus reflecting on individuals. From one-step and idea, reuse combined with a good designing thought can create a new beautiful world.  In fact, it forced us as designers to think outside the box, and think beyond the usual substance of
the material. As the UAE has the largest ecological footprint in the world, we believe that reuse is a duty for us as designers to be part of solving this problem.

What did you take away from the INDEX experience?

Index exposed us to different creative ideas, which was encouraging do more research of how can we improve our designs to be accepted in the industry world. The experience gave us a great opportunity to enter the real interior design world, and understand how people work in it. It also improved our time management skills as a team work a whole and be patient and work hard to get the best results.