Downtown Design to unveil ground-breaking innovations from London's Royal College of Art

Dubai (WAM): The London-based Royal College of Art, RCA, is unveiling three ground-breaking projects featuring some of the world’s most promising new technologies at the upcoming Downtown Design, the Middle East’s platform for original design, from October 28th to 31st. The event, which will take place in The Venue, Downtown Dubai, is held under the patronage of H.H. Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Dubai Culture and Arts Authority, and is sponsored by Emaar, and the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. The theme for this year is, 'Original Design’, and will introduce visitors to cutting-edge, pioneering concepts that have yet to go into production, highlighting the importance of innovative, design thinking, leading to breakthrough discoveries. Recognised as the world’s most influential post-graduate art and design institution, the RCA has produced many of the best-known contemporary names across multiple disciplines including Sir James Dyson, Tracey Emin and David Hockney. It has chosen Downtown Design to premiere three ground-breaking projects in the region: "Silk Leaf", a revolutionary technology that mimics the natural process of photosynthesis, "Stay Plastic" investigates an architecture completely built from recycled plastic, and "Gravity Sketch", a device that uses augmented reality to provide designers and architects with an extraordinary tool that allows them to view their drawing in 3D. Each of the three projects has the potential to revolutionise the broader design industry as well as applications transferable into the medical and bio-physics fields. In addition to the exhibition, the RCA’s head of the Interior Design Programme, and one of the UK’s leading designers, Ab Rogers, will be one of the headline speakers at Downtown Design’s talk series programme that will run alongside the exhibition. "We are now using design and technology to build responsive solutions to change the way environment responds with its user. There is real potential to create digital inventions that work as part of intelligent, sustainable spaces to offer the occupant an immersive and multi-sensory interior landscape, which they can influence and control," said Rogers. The exhibit is one of the innovation initiatives taking centre stage at Downtown Design this year, as part of the event's efforts to highlight new talent and technologies and underline Dubai’s role as a global hub for innovation and creativity. – Emirates News Agency, WAM – http://www.wam.ae/en/news/emirates/1395271178207.html