Dubai Institute

Freedom of the Press in the UAE

2008llorens — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:26:33 +0000

This is the Human Rights Watch report on UAE in 2009:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79305

Warning to Guggenheim Abu Dhabi branch:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2007/07/18/guggenheim-labor-rights-risk-abu-dhabi-branch

On the media law reform:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/04/06/just-good-news-please

The ABC on Sheikh involved in torture
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7402099

Events Gossip

2008llorens — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:28:33 +0000

Events Gossip

Culture Network in the Middle East

The social community website for events & entertainments professionals. Here you will find Events & Entertainment related news, jobs, entertainment company listings, supplier information, venues, public relation companies and best of all the right connections in the events industry. Our members benefit by being invited to our free event professional social nights, communicating and collaborating with other events professionals, getting the latest information on events going on in the Middle East Region and increasing their visibility among their peers.

Pages

2008llorens — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:28:10 +0000

Pages was started in 2004 by artists Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi as an ongoing project, examining the possibilities of interaction and reflection between various local discourses and condition that may generate spaces of critique or instances of critical practices.

Pages project is defined through activities, such as the publication of a bilingual Farsi/English magazine, architectural proposals, video documentations and installation works.

With a particular focus on the Iranian context, Pages emphasises on those artistic practices that communicate the specific conditions in which they are produced, those socio-political circumstances against which an artistic production is inevitably read as a discourse. Yet, the specificity of the Iranian situation has triggered discussions of a broader context. Addressing issues with regard to locally specific conditions can bring one closer to the reality of these issues, problematizing their common notions and triggering their re-articulation. Pages tries to constantly point to those intricacies and dissonances within and among local currents that give way to alternative chains of meanings, relations and coincidences. As such, Pages activities are taken as ongoing processes of research, which inevitably tend to undermine predefined and geographically bound notions of subjectivity and locality. Both the projects and the bilingual magazine undergo constant rethinking of their disposition in regard to the social and political contexts to which they refer.

Pages Magazine

Funding Network

2008llorens — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:46:55 +0000

Lab For Culture

Find Ideas. Find People. Find Money. Find Events. Find Debates. One website, 50 countries, 6 languages.

We work with and for artists, arts and culture organisations and networks, cultural professionals and audiences in the 50 countries of Europe, as well as providing a platform for cultural cooperation between Europe and the rest of the world.

Our mission is both to ensure that all those working on cultural collaboration have access to up-to-the-minute information and to encourage the cultural sector to become more experimental with online technologies.

Banff Center Business Plan

2008llorens — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:28:43 +0000

The Banff Center is:

a leader on the local, national and international stages in the development and promotion of creative work in the arts, sciences, business, and the environment
a catalyst for creative thought, lifelong learning, the development and showcasing of new work, and the advancement of applied research
a resource for individual and group renewal and transformation, and an enabler of innovation and creativity for participants and staff to question assumptions, explore ideas, embrace change, and exemplify excellence
a destination of choice for conferences

Banff Center Annual Report PDF

Banff Center Financial Statement PDF

The Shelter

2008llorens — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:18:20 +0000

The shelter is an innovation campus that allows ideas to exist in a creative environment. This environment is infused with added value experiences such as language and design classes, regional major events such as the Art Dubai VIP lounge and will exist to create an experience in order to attract and identify innovation.

Working under the support of the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority the shelter houses the most unique talent in the region. Startups in the region and beyond can operate within the shelter and will be able to license the business through the shelter operations center which will assist startups with their business registration process.

International participants who are working in the Emirates on a project basis can operate from the shelter through the shelter short lease program and can fill the application form below. Offices are fit out with the top of the range internet connection, a dedicated landline, printing facilities, a meeting room as well as an available secretary to arrange meetings and manage schedules.

www.shelter.ae

PR marketing partner

2008llorens — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:16:24 +0000

brownbook magazine is a middle eastern magazine dedicated to informing
the region within and beyond about `Lifestyle, Design, Travel and
Agenda. The goal of the magazine is to create awareness for the growing
talent that is available in the region whether they are artists,
galleries, photographers or even talented individuals who add value to
the region and beyond. Today, brownbook is the second most selling
magazine in Dubai, which has superseded any and all expectation and
reaffirms the belief that there is a true demand for content of the
region and beyond. brownbook is f a tool for creating an awareness
rather than being just a publication.

www.brownbookmag.com

Swedish eco-building consultancy

2008llorens — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:05:46 +0000

‘ECO 21 Consultants’ based in Stockholm, Sweden are planning to launch its first eco-building consultancy on a housing project in Xiamen, China. As the domestic throughput is a major factor of non-sustainability, we as social entrepreneurs from ‘ECO 21 Consultant’ are dedicated to advise developers and constructors with cutting edge knowledge of eco-friendly building possibilities tailored to their individual projects. We are a non-profit organisation trying to focus on advising eco-friendly building development in areas where there is a relatively high margin of improvement and large-scale development is ongoing, so especially the developing Asian economies. Building projects in countries such as China, Bangladesh or Vietnam or other developing countries offers high social returns on investment through more sustainable rates of domestic throughput – that means in practice: less use of energy and water during the daily
functioning of the buildings through a small – around 3% of the total investment – qualitative material investment in the beginning of the project.

See the whole business plan

Hotel Partner

2008llorens — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:45:14 +0000

Near Shanghai, the Songjiang district has become a popular weekend destination for many tourists with its natural beauty and sprawling landscapes. And now the Songjiang Hotel might just become the newest and greenest attraction. While it may look a bit sci-fi, this hotel was designed for the real (green) world, with many sustainable features in mind.

This proposed hotel was designed by the firm Atkins, the same firm which has brought us buildings such as Tianjin’s Pile of Boxes and the Bahrain World Trade Center. The 400-bed resort will be located in a 100-meter-deep quarry located in the province and will contain restaurants, cafes, sport facilities, and even underwater public areas and guestrooms. Water will play an important part in the design, featured in many areas around the hotel. Waterfalls, underwater aquariums, and green areas will be integrated into the design to match the existing facing of the quarry.

The reuse of an already existing site means that the environmental impact will hopefully be smaller. The entire hotel is to be covered in a green roof, while the building will use geothermal energy for it’s electrical supply and heating. The quarry will also provide a good source of heat control and shelter from the environment.

The design of the building is meant to reflect the natural landscape of the quarry. “We drew our inspiration from the quarry setting itself, adopting the image of a green hill cascading down the natural rock face as a series of terraced landscaped hanging gardens.” said Martin Jochman. Needless to say, with such a cool looking site, you’d expect to get a design which will take advantages of it’s very extreme location, and you’d be correct. The hotel, will feature amongst other things: bungee jumping.

source: www.inhabitat.com

Everland Hotel

2008llorens — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:58:48 +0000

www.everland.ch

a smaller version, perhaps, of the proposed art hotel.