The entrance of Dar Al-Hekma College on Saturday and Sunday was vibrant with bright colors and artistic designs assembled by the hands of the Interior Design students at the women’s college.
Afnan Kattan, Dur Zuhair Fayez, Eman Al-Esayi, Lina Hashim, Nadeen Attar, Noha Abul-Jadayel, Rabia Julaidan and Siraa AbulHamayel were the eight senior students who displayed and presented their projects.
The decorating projects included designs for an animation and production center, beach resort, commercial complex, women business center, young men’s entertainment center, finishing school, art and technology center for children and desert resort.
Abul-Jadayel chose to plan a design that reflects the cultures and traditions of her country.
“I chose to design a desert resort since we don’t usually invest in deserts for entertainment purposes,” she said.
Abul-Jadayel’s explained that she used the symbols of the Kingdom and Arabia in mixture of the old with the new.
She chose Jeddah, where the desert meets the sea, to be the location for her project. According to her, the desert is a vast, open space just like the sea. It can be used for many activities like horseback riding or rallies.
“Locals as well as foreign tourists would love to explore the desert and enjoy its calmness and different activities at the same time,” she said.
Adopting the use of the beiges, faded yellows and natural reds of the desert, Abul-Jadayel decorated her conceptual resort with pictures of horses and palm trees. The entrance has the shape of an eye “since Arabians are known for their beautiful big eyes,” she said.
“I included waterfalls that would let the residents of the resorts relax and refresh in the dry weather of the desert,” she added.
Fayez’s project entailed creating a model for a children’s center of art and technology to stimulate young minds.
“The center is colored and based on the candy-shop theme so that they can come excited to the center for learning and entertaining,” she said. The motto of Fayez’s model center is “Learning by Playing.”
The center is designed for children from the age of one to ten. Her design includes a library, a playground, and food court. Technology is used in the playground to create a virtual experience.
“When children climb up the slide and get down, they will see balls on the ground,” she said. “The balls are not real, they are created with a projector as a way to expand their imagination.”
Julaidan chose to focus on relaxation for a project she called the “Get Rid of Stress Beach Resort.”
“I divided the projects into three stages,” she said. The first stage is the high-stress stage. “You enter the resort so stressed wanting to meditate and relax,” she said. But before getting to this point, she decided to emphasize the stress the spa customers would feel through the colors of the entrance hall to the building.
The colors and designs of this stage reflect the high stress of the person when entering the resort and before meditation. The entrance colors are dark and the shapes are metallic. As the person gets inside the spa areas, colors become brighter and lighter.
The college also featured some other design projects by sophomores, including Reem Abu-Zaid’s modern office lamp.
“My client asked me to use recycled reused materials in my design,” said Abu-Zaid.
Abu-Zaid utilized metallic cans in her design and analyzed her client’s logo in the structure of the lamp.
“This was to reflect her personality,” Abu-Zaid said. “The pink color, my client’s favorite color, was the basic color in my design.”