The low-down from Lebanon: Adorno X BDW

On Friday, thousands of design lovers congregated on Beirut’s newly restored Beit Museum to kickstart the seventh edition of the city’s Beirut Design Week – the biggest and fastest-growing design event in the Middle East. The opening-night show, Independent Beirut, brought together 26 independent and emerging designers and studios from across Lebanon, and showcased a staggering range of work, from Wyssem Nochi’s ‘Beirut Power’ glass candleholders, to Youmna Geday’s astonishing eggshell installation ‘Unborn Creatures of Light’. We’ve picked out some of our favourite pieces in the gallery below.

Independent Beirut is the result of an open call put out by Beirut Design Week and the online design platform Adorno. Selected by a panel of designers, critics and curators including Suzanne Trocmé, Joy Mardini, BDW creative director Ghassan Salameh and Adorno co-founder Kristian Snorre Andersen, the designers were chosen on the basis of how well their work captures the character, scope and creativity of modern Lebanon, and of Beirut in particular – a melting-pot city full of energy and contradiction, and the ideal breeding ground for offbeat ideas and imaginative ambitions. 

As BDW progresses, the Adorno team are in the process of finalising which of the works showing at Independent Beirut will form the platform’s first collection of design devoted to the city – making it the 12th global design hub to  be recognised and represented on adorno.design. The selected works will be available to view and buy on the site from Friday 29 June (although you can sign up for an exclusive email preview today).