Just doors.
If you’ve known us for a while then this won’t be a very startling confession but, we have a thing for doors. Not all doors, actually only one very specific type of door - the iron gates that are part of the UAE’s Sha’bi Houses.
Nowadays we find them when we’re moving through the more out-of-the-way places in the UAE, hiding in the old neighbourhoods and towns, where progress hasn’t quite hit the same as it has in the cities.
Sha’bi houses, in whatever part of the UAE you find them, are a flashback to a special moment in time, representing a particular and fascinating episode in the UAE’s rapid development. The doors are the bright, iron poster of that moment.
The context is fascinating - Sha’bi houses were designed and developed as a movement of nation-building. The UAE was brand new and the challenge was to settle a largely nomadic population and give the conditions to grow. The project had to come together quickly and needed to answer to the very particular cultural, social and environmental context. You can read more about the story here.
When it came time to put on the gates, these colorful, beautifully geometric steel gates became the go-to. And that’s about as much as we know of the story.
The same doors can be seen in many other countries in the region (Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc) with similar grids and patterns being employed to the same effect.
We’re fascinated by the doors. We can’t help it.
The general opinion of most Emiratis who we try and explain our fascination to is that the doors are…just doors. They’re seen the same way that Shabi houses are now - old and very normal things that need to make way for new things. Something to lose for the sake or progress.
But as designers and generally curious people we see much more - identity, consistency, a grid, colour choices - something we explored in creating the below stamp set.
It’s the way the weather has worn the colours. The patterns, shapes, geometry and motifs, which have an incredible consistency yet never seem to produce two identical doors. It’s their connection to a small, specific and unique part of the UAE’s history, and to its people.
And that’s it. We don’t have any groundbreaking conclusions, but we do have a lot of questions and we thought we’d start by putting them online and seeing what happens.
We’d like to know:
Where do the door originate from/where are they made?
Who designs them - is the owner of the house involved?
What are the designs based on?
Where do they go when they’re no longer needed?
Maybe you’ve got an answer or two for us? If you do hit us up at hello@slash.ae and we can go from there.
