Amman Design Week Returns After Seven Years with "Accumulations"

Amman Design Week returns from October 2–17, 2026, after a seven-year hiatus, assembling more than 220 designers and participants across exhibitions, installations, public-space projects, talks, workshops, and performances in Jordan.

Founded by Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah in 2016, the event's fourth edition unfolds across Ras El Ain, Jabal Al Lweibdeh, Jabal Amman, Iraq Al Amir, and, for the first time, Aqaba. The 2026 edition carries the theme "Accumulations," examining how materials, memories, knowledge, labor, and everyday practices gather over time and become part of the places people inhabit.

Exhibitions Curator Faysal Tabbarah — an architect, educator, curator, and co-founder of Architecture + Other Things (A+OT) — has organized the works around connections between daily practices, material environments, and cultural memories. Each project appears alongside a "trace": an artifact, archival document, oral history, inherited tool, or ecological reference.

New Leadership from FADAA

The return introduces a new leadership structure under architects Sarah Hejazin and Bisher Tabbaa, co-founders of the Jordanian architecture and design studio FADAA. Their appointment as co-directors places an architecture practice at the head of an event that has expanded beyond exhibition-making into public space, education, local production, and cultural programming. For 2026, this translates into a decision to work across existing buildings, parks, streets, heritage sites, and landscapes, letting the city itself shape how visitors encounter the exhibitions.

The Hangar and Industrial Memory

The main exhibition begins at the Hangar in Ras El Ain, a 1930s industrial building originally constructed to house the electricity generators that powered Amman during a period of rapid urban growth. TURATH: Architecture and Urban Design rehabilitated the structure in collaboration with the Greater Amman Municipality, converting it into a cultural venue while leaving its industrial past visible in the building fabric. The surrounding Ras El Ain Park, Al Mamsha, Al Mudarraj, and Al-Hussein Cultural Center extend the program into the wider neighborhood.

Inside the Hangar, the exhibition spans architecture, furniture, material research, publishing, and public-space projects at different scales. Praxis' "Infusing Green Infrastructure in Amman" follows three interventions — a staircase, a park, and an undeveloped piece of land — developed through community engagement, site analysis, and technical research, tracing how local conditions inform public-space design. DASA Architecture Practice's "Common Ground" takes gathering as its starting point, using modular blocks arranged on a grid to create different possibilities for interaction while leaving social use open.

Material change and the passage of time anchor other projects. "Al-Mastaba" by Laith Matarweh Studio for Architecture layers stone and concrete into a structure conceived as a future ruin, with gaps between blocks and gravel anticipating the gradual arrival of vegetation. "Binayah," by Abdulrahman Al Muftah and Huzaima Al Rifai, draws from Amman's layered landscapes and the vertical openings of traditional Qatari towers to explore furniture as an inhabitable architectural element.

Permanent Interventions in the Public Realm

The exhibition continues into Ras El Ain Park through permanent urban interventions, making public space one of the edition's main sites. Civil Architecture's "Folly" places a ceramic-tile roof between the park's trees, using gaps in the canopy to create a shaded gathering space; the tiles were developed and manufactured in Jordan by Haswa.

Nearby, Abeer Anabtawi's "Nawwarat Amman" transforms a large area of bare concrete into a basketball court whose imagery draws from tomatoes, chamomile, mallow leaves, and wheat — plants and crops reflecting Amman's markets, food, and domestic life. Mohamad Nahleh's "Domes of the Rock" takes a lighting pole above a stone seat and connects it to the structural history of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock. Its half-scale wood and steel form draws attention to the monument's successive repairs, reinforcement, and rebuilding, while continuing to function as lighting and seating.

In Jabal Al Lweibdeh, at the Ash Shariah College Intersection, "Ard Al Sahn" by Ziad Jamaleddine and Makram el Kadi of L.E.FT, with Iheb Guermazi and Beya Othmani, extends the public space surrounding the Shariah Mosque into the street. Local stone waste forms a surface oriented toward the Qibla, while flowering trees and bird baths introduce shade and ecological activity, giving an overlooked intersection a new civic role.

Talks Program

Khaled Al-Bashir, architect, curator, researcher, and Arts and Culture Director at Darat al Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation, curates the wider program of workshops, talks, walks, performances, residencies, and ongoing activations. The discussion "How is Architectural Value Constructed?" takes place on October 3 at Al Mudarraj in Ras El Ain, bringing together Laith Matarweh, Ali Ismail Karimi of Civil Architecture, Rana Beiruti, and Ziad Jamaleddine of L.E.FT, moderated by ArchDaily Editor-in-Chief Christele Harrouk. The panel forms part of the "Practices and Processes" strand and examines how architectural value and its narratives are constructed over time — a question that sits at the center of "Accumulations."

From 1950s Houses to Hellenistic Ruins

Other locations extend the theme through different layers of Jordanian architecture and landscape. In Jabal Al Lweibdeh, Darat Abu Adnan, a restored 1950s house built for the Abu Hassan family, becomes a principal setting; its architecture reflects a period when international influences were adapted to local materials and domestic requirements. In Iraq Al Amir, Qasr Al Abd, a Hellenistic-period structure built from monumental stone blocks and surrounded by caves, springs, agricultural terraces, and olive landscapes, brings another timescale into the discussion.

Across the Hangar's industrial history, the infrastructure of Ras El Ain Park, the domestic architecture of Jabal Al Lweibdeh, the archaeology of Iraq Al Amir, and the coastal setting of Aqaba, "Accumulations" positions each new project as another layer within Jordan's evolving architectural and cultural landscape. The edition joins a cycle of architecture events interrogating the forces shaping the built environment, from the 9th Oslo Architecture Triennale's "What if Nature Comes First?" to TAB 2026's "How Much?" in Tallinn, and ahead to the second Copenhagen Architecture Biennial, scheduled for September 9–October 15, 2027, under the theme "Elements."