Most people who’ve dreamed of forging a career as a fashion designer will have heard of Parsons.
It’s the art and design college based in New York that counts Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, Jenna Lyons and Alexander Wang (to name a few) among its alumni.
And now Parsons School of Design – along with MIT – are helping to develop an educational institute in Dubai, a design school billed as the first of its kind in the region.
(If you’re not familiar with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it’s an esteemed research university in the US that has 85 Nobel laureates among its graduates).
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The new Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation is slated to open in 2018, and will be situated in the d3 area near Downtown Dubai.
The school, which was launched under the directives of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, will welcome its first students for the year’s autumn term.
The institution (which will be known as DIDI) hopes to foster creative talent in the region, and help drive local and regional economic growth.
“Dubai projects are based on comprehensive studies that identify future challenges and address them,” said Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Future Foundation. “Our region needs 30,000 designers by 2019.”
Though the two American universities are collaborating on the project, the curriculum for DIDI’s four-year degrees will be tailor-made for designers and innovators in the Middle East.
Students will graduate with the region’s first Bachelor of Design degree, and they can also specialise in Product Design, Strategic Design Management, Media, Visual Art and Fashion Design.
While there aren’t yet many details about the campus itself, it was designed by London architects Foster + Partners (who are behind leading buildings like the British capital’s Gherkin).
So if you’re already thinking about becoming part of a university’s class of 2022, this could be one to consider…
Images: mediaoffice.ae
