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This Week From The Editor

How often do we find ourselves in hotel lobbies, airport lounges or office receptions—alone with our thoughts, headphones on, or a dog-eared book in hand? Are we affected by the presence or absence of others in these spaces of pause? French anthropologist Marc Augé calls such environments 'non-places': transient zones devoid of relational meaning, where most pass by anonymously. Yet the lobby complicates this notion—not merely a standby area, but a space of potential, observation and quiet anticipation.

WAIT FOR IT

This duality of the lobby—as both a pause and an act of advocacy—anchors this week's dispatch. It is pertinent to ponder how reconstruction is inherently political and shaped by both material needs and symbolic intentions. To rebuild is to lobby for a specific vision of the future. Similarly, the essays in 'Architecture After War: A Reader', edited by Bohdan Kryzhanovsky, support a reimagined approach to rebuilding war-torn cities, mobilising architecture as a tool for post-war reconstruction.

Another aligned example is the design studio Waiting for Ideas, whose name itself embodies the generative positioning of waiting not as a passive but active phase of creative incubation. Architecture firm Alvisi Kirimoto, with its emphasis on immersive site study, furthers this: "We must observe, steal and preserve what we see, never betraying its essence," its founders note, their works laying the groundwork for action via presence and introspection. Meanwhile, our picks from the Contemporary and Bawwaba sections of Art Dubai 2025 highlight works rooted in ecology, migration and identity. The art fair therein becomes a cultural lobby—a space where new modes of expression are actively negotiated.

The lobby is not an in-between but a stage where ideas gestate, the present and future contested, influenced. Waiting, then, is not mere stillness. It is intentional, measured patience. A powerful form of persuasion.

Amit Gupta

Simon Mordant on patronage in contemporary art
Simon Mordant on patronage in contemporary art
See See

A summer fair: Art Dubai foregrounds contemporary art from the Global South

10 MIN READ    Read More

Think

'Architecture After War' posits a guide for post-war reconstruction in Ukraine

10 MIN READ    Read More

Think
Inspire Inspire

Alvisi Kirimoto on carving spaces from lightness and fusing diverse influences

12 MIN READ    Read More

Reflect

Art Dubai 2025

Date

18 - 20 April, 2025

LOCATION

United Arab Emirates

Art Dubai 2025

Art Dubai​ 2025 returns to Madinat Jumeirah with over 120 exhibitors​,​ curated sections, performances, site-specific interventions, experiential commissions,​ installations​, talks and conferences. This year's highlights include Mexican artist Héctor Zamora's sculptural works and performative group actions involving terracotta objects; Emirati artist Mohammed Kazem's digital installation 'Directions (Merging)'; the Global Art Forum 2025, titled 'The New New Normal' and Total Arts at the Courtyard's debut installation, 'Reconstructed Landscape'.

Learn More
STIRpad

NEWS

Waiting for Ideas translates motion into stillness with precise, minimalist forms

Waiting for Ideas translates motion into stillness with precise, minimalist forms

04 MIN READ     Read More

Separator

Imaginative tools to vibrant algae pigments: research experiments by we+ at MDW 2025

Imaginative tools to vibrant algae pigments: research experiments by we+ at MDW 2025

04 MIN READ     Read More

Seductive and sinister

Monira al Qadiri's brooding and buoyant vision of oil comes to the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.

06 MIN READ

Alice Godwin

Seductive and sinister

The Kuwaiti artist harnesses notes of light and shade, joy and horror, in her art as she addresses the pervasive role of oil in the global economy.

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