rana beiruti

Portrait of Rana Beiruti, courtesy of the curator.

Rana Beiruti (born in 1987) is a curator based in Amman, Jordan. With a background in architecture, her research interests focus on studying and documenting land-based and social practices in the Arab region, with a focus on topics related to the earth, material, craft, and the built environment. Knowledge building, community engagement, and cultural programming are at the heart of her practice. 

Rana has curated and designed a multitude of contemporary design and art projects, exhibitions, residencies, educational programs, and publications across the region — in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and the UAE. Most recently, she curated the large-scale survey exhibition ‘Arab Design Now’ for the inaugural Design Doha Biennale. Most notably, Rana co-founded and directed Amman Design Week, a design and architecture biennial consisting of large-scale curated exhibitions, commissioned works, learning programs, and cultural events. Working also as a consultant in the creative industries, she assists governments and art institutions in programming and curatorial strategy, audience building, and the development of the creative sector. 

LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: Your background is in architecture, but you’ve evolved into a curator working across various fields, from design to cultural programming. How did your architectural education shape your curatorial practice, and what motivated you to shift your focus toward understanding craft, material, and social practices?

RANA BEIRUTI: The study of architecture is very multidisciplinary. To create spaces you need to have an intimate knowledge of sociocultural context, economy, and politics. More importantly, you need to understand the natural environment; local geology, ecology, landscape, and materials. After all, an architect was traditionally a builder, or a craftsman, with deep knowledge of their craft.

Architecture was an excellent point of departure for me to engage further with the material and cultural world, and to strive to dig deeper into the cultural objects and spaces we create, how we make them, and how they influence the way we live and interact with our environment. This is the essence of understanding craft. 

My interest is in craft, material, and the social practices that evolve around what can be harvested from the land in a very local sense. There is a lot to unpack when you just look around you in the local landscape, from learning about native plants and soils to local traditional practices of understanding community and collective actions. It inspires me to create diverse programs, both pedagogical and practical, in which art, design, craft, and architecture all matter and can become vehicles for expression and knowledge exchange. 

LŠ: How would you describe the current Jordanian design scene? What are some of the difficulties that local designers and architects in Jordan face, especially regarding resources, exposure, and sustainability? And on the flip side, what opportunities do you see for emerging creatives in the region?

RB: Jordan is uniquely positioned to have an innovative design culture due to its rich history in craft and its abundant material possibilities. There’s a very raw aesthetic that is sincere and true to materials, which makes design in Jordan distinctive. We’re also seeing a new generation of architects and makers embrace technology and experiment with material in new ways, while also digging into what we like to call “grandmother knowledge” and staying rooted in understandings of identity and cultural practice. 

With the proliferation of new biennials and design weeks regionally, new opportunities for commissions, and for creating works outside of client or resource constraints has led designers to be more adventurous and courageous. I also think there’s a cross-pollination of ideas across the region that has revealed that there are a lot of similarities and opportunities for exchange and learning where someone in Lebanon, for example, could learn about new materials in the Gulf, and someone in Jordan could easily find parallels in materials and architecture as in Morocco.

LŠ: Amman Design Week was groundbreaking for the city. What were some of the key challenges you faced in establishing a design-focused event in Amman, and how did you ensure it supported both local and emerging designers?

RB: When we started, we didn't have in mind specifically that we wanted to do a design event. We met with a lot of people and got to learn about their practices, their aspirations and dreams, and the challenges they faced. Mostly we came to discover that designers were looking for ways to connect with others: with opportunities for learning and making, with clients, with other designers. It’s what we heard from designers that led us to imagine a periodic connecting point for people to come together, exchange, learn, and produce. Through our research, we also gained knowledge of so many talented design practices. 

So we built the design week around four pillars; connection, learning, locality, and conscious design. It was an annual connecting point, and we envisioned the programs, including the exhibitions, as points for learning and exchange. Our focus was really on what was taking place in Jordan and the region - so local materials, local talents, and local conversations were prioritized. As a non-commercial biennial, it was important to create space for conversations and experimentation. In that sense, the biennial was not about creating luxury commercial design, but about highlighting conscious practices that were experimenting with materials, forms, and aesthetics that weren’t devoid of respect for the environment, communities, and sustainable cultural practices. 

Amman Design Week, 2017, Bayouda Garden exhibition.

Amman Design Week, 2016, Hangar Exhibition, curated by Sahel Alhiyari.

LŠ: Can you walk us through the curatorial direction of each edition of Amman Design Week - how were the themes shaped? What were your main goals for setting those directions?

RB: Our first edition in 2016 was an introduction to design under the slogan Huna Al Tasmeem which roughly translates to This is Design. It was about saying design is here and now, in this moment and in this place, while introducing audiences to designers from Jordan, and opening up conversations about the various understandings of what design is, its importance, and its limitlessness. 

After this introductory year, we felt it was time to turn our initiative into a full-blown movement. The theme Design Moves Life Moves Design was about design for positive change; and how we can come together as designers to make a difference — whether through civic engagement, product innovation, language and visual communication, or architectural intervention.

For the third edition, we swayed in the other direction. Rather than “problem-solving” and addressing what is, it was about “imagination” and what could be. The theme of Possibilities opened new horizons and explorations in alternative materials, applications, and approaches to design. 

The conversations sparked in each edition reflected on the one before, and in turn, influenced the next generation of exhibitors. I think of these themes not as isolated conversations, but as one continuing conversation, with each responding to the previous one.  

Amman Design Week 2017 with work by Dina Haddadin titled The Stream, 2017.

Amann Design Week 2017.

Amann Design Week 2019, The Hangar Exhibition photographed by Edmund Sumner.

LŠ: How has Amman Design Week impacted the city’s cultural and urban landscape? Could you share any specific examples where the design week led to long-lasting changes or initiated new purposes for specific spaces in Amman?

RB: With every edition of Amman Design Week, we committed to have an urban intervention component; one that demonstrates and tests an aspect of city design, and in particular looks at how the city can open up spaces for cultural programming and engagement. For our first edition, we held our Crafts District in an abandoned bus terminal that was built but never occupied. By enlivening the space for the duration of the festival, we drew attention to its state, and addressed the possibilities of what cultural programs and social spaces can achieve for derelict spaces in the city. 

In subsequent editions we also engaged in various exercises such as reviving a city bus route and map system, creating public art and meeting spaces for children, and creating walking trails in some of the city’s heritage neighborhoods and prominent historical homes. In each edition, the pop-up Crafts District exhibition took place in a different abandoned location, highlighting a neighborhood and its potential to contain space for more permanent engagement. 

It’s very important that a biennial or design week, or any event at the scale we are talking about, is sensitive to the impact that they can have on the local community or neighborhood. The intention is to use these events as catalysts to do good for the neighborhood and community and leave it stronger than before. Particularly in the domain of design, where we have an opportunity to put into practice some of the conversations and approaches we believe in.  

Amman Design Week 2016, Crafts District, Bus Terminal.

LŠ: The Textile Innovation Lab was a notable feature of Amman Design Week. What drew you to emphasize material innovation, and how do you see these practices contributing to the future of design in Jordan?

RB: Jordan has a rich history of textile crafts. Being at the epicenter of the region, the textile crafts have grown with trade and exchange with big centers in Damascus, in Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. Weaving is a big part of our culture and goes beyond rugs and tapestries to being used in multiple applications, including the making of fabric architecture. Textile crafts such as embroidery have also long been a means of self-expression and social practice that has been handed down through generations. 

Our textile culture is also a product of our natural landscape, and Jordan boasts one of the highest biodiversities and varieties of flora in the world, despite its relatively small size. This means it’s a haven for natural dyes and exploration of material for textiles. The premise of the Textile Innovation Lab series was to explore both - the traditional practices in weaving, natural dyeing, and paper making, as well as more modern techniques such as learning how to make a variety of new materials, bioplastics, and natural leathers. 

For me, it’s not about craft preservation. It’s important that crafts are not fossilized and preserved, but that they are alive and practiced and evolve to meet more contemporary needs, technologies, and aesthetics. At the same time, what we hoped to achieve in the workshops and subsequent exhibition was to maintain the value system that underpins craft; those of self-expression, of community and co-creation, and a respect for the natural environment.  

Textile Innovation Lab: Material Innovation Exhibition with work by Katja Lonzec titled Scoby Science, 2018.

Textile Innovation Lab: Sample materials, 2018.

Textile Innovation Lab: Widad Kawar Home for Arab Dress. Meeting and workshop at Tiraz.

LŠ: Looking back, how do you feel about the legacy of Amman Design Week? What moments or achievements stand out to you the most?

RB: Amman Design Week still resonates as the most personal and impactful project to me. I used to obsess about sustainability and continuity, and I still hope it will come back one day, perhaps under someone else’s leadership or direction. But now I believe that it did not necessarily have to continue in the same format for one to appreciate the impact that it had, and the ripple effect it created, the fruits of which we are still experiencing today and have yet to experience. The designers we reached out to, and who exhibited with us for the first time, have now entered the international stage and are sought after by some of the world’s biggest and most important museums and biennials. It’s an evolution that has revealed itself over time. I still learn new ways it has made an impact and an impression on people; from the way it imprinted on the city, the ideas it presented, the young designers whose practices were transformed by it, both from a practical and business sense and the standpoint of inspiration and evolution. Amman Design Week was important for the connections and networks it created, and the friendships it built. 

LŠ: You were invited to curate the headline exhibition for Design Doha’s inaugural biennial, focusing on Arab Design Now. What were some of the challenges in curating a survey of Arab design, and how did you approach representing the diversity of cultures across the region?

RB: Curating an exhibition surveying a region as geographically and culturally diverse as ours undoubtedly comes with a great degree of sensitivity and responsibility. Our region’s abundant and rich history of design and craft traverses numerous civilizations and is shaped by a fusion of cultures, traditions, languages, and beliefs. The challenge was to tell the story, or stories, of a region so vast and diverse by respecting and reflecting that diversity, while also drawing parallels and similarities. 

Conscious not to flatten this diverse cultural context, I chose to include a multitude of voices and identities hailing from varying places, trajectories, and histories, and to provide a reading of the Arab world in which the idea of collective identity transcends simplistic ethnic or geographic boundaries and instead relies on alternative approaches to mapping and defining commonalities.

The exhibition therefore also includes works by people who do not identify as Arab at all, but who have nonetheless made this region their home and the base for their practice. Conversely, it also includes Arab designers in the diaspora—those who have been generationally displaced or have sought opportunities elsewhere, and who, as a result, have expanded, stretched, exchanged, merged, and blended their design approaches with others, taking them in new directions altogether.

That being said, while the term ‘survey’ may imply a comprehensive or data-driven approach to collecting and mapping contemporary design from the Arab world, the exhibition should instead be considered a selective snapshot of design as it relates to the pertinent issues that impact our region today. It is built upon a series of dialogues I conducted with designers over several months and interrogates themes extracted from these encounters that are urgent and worthy of introspection: geography and land politics, architecture and the evolution of our urban spaces, material and visual sensibilities, society and collective culture, heritage and identity, and language. 

LŠ: After such an impressive body of work, what’s next for you? Are there any upcoming projects or collaborations you’re particularly excited about?

RB: We’re excited to launch the publication for Arab Design Now in the coming months – which serves as an important document and record of design in our region, and features 11 monologues from designers and experts, as well as a written text by myself that outlines the common preoccupations of designers in our region. We’re also hoping to see parts of Arab Design Now travel, and to show some of the work in different contexts. 

Arab Design Now exhibition with work by Amina Agueznay: Portals 1-4, 2024. Photo by Julian Velásquez.

Adrian Pepe at Arab Design Now. Photo by Julian Velásquez.

LŠ: As a curator who has worked on large-scale projects and in diverse settings, what advice would you give to aspiring curators who want to work at the intersection of design, culture, and community engagement?

RB: There’s so much that can be and needs to be done in our region. I think the advice I would give is to commit to a point of inquiry or path for research and keep playing with it, observing it, subverting it, and turning it inside out. Try to experiment with different formats of cultural and pedagogical engagement, with different approaches and ways of doing things. Engage new people every time. Each time you throw ideas out there, see how things change, and then allow them to change you back in return. There is no finished product, it’s all a process. As a curator, everything you produce is merely Act I of a performance. You can always say it differently the next time. 

Native Plants Course.

Performing Bodies by Hadeyeh Badri. Installation view of Body 1 and Body 2. All images are courtesy of the curator.