Hydraulic Pressure Turns Steel Sheets Into Sarah Naghawi's JAWF Objects

Jordanian designer Sarah Naghawi has applied hydromechanical forming to stainless steel for the first time in Jordan's design sector. Her experimental collection, JAWF, debuted at Amman Design Week 2026 and manipulates sheet metal with positive and negative hydraulic pressure, pushing steel past what conventional stamping or cold-rolling can do.

The name comes from the Arabic word for an inner chamber or protected cavity. That idea drives the whole project: Naghawi treats the internal void as an architectural condition defined by displaced matter. The objects are, in essence, hollow chambers whose skins record how they were made.

How does the process work?

The fabrication starts with welded sheet assemblies. Hydraulic fluid pressure introduced into these sealed seams builds internally until the metal yields. That force inflates, buckles, and displaces the steel skin from within.

As the material gives way, concave and convex profiles develop as reciprocal structural conditions. The reflective volumes permanently retain the deformation traces and stress concentrations produced during expansion. Nothing is smoothed over or hidden. Every bulge and crease is evidence of the pressure that shaped it.

The result is a set of self-supporting enclosures where a single deformed metallic skin does three jobs at once. It works as structural shell, envelope, and functional interior — no frame, no lining, no separate core. The skin is the object.

What does this change for Jordan's design sector?

Until now, hydromechanical forming has lived in industrial fabrication, not in Jordanian design studios. Naghawi's collection marks the technique's initial application within the country's design field. By testing the material limits of steel beyond conventional stamping or cold-rolling methods, JAWF demonstrates that locally available industrial processes can produce sculptural, self-supporting work without traditional tooling or molds.

That matters for a growing design scene. A process that forms complex double-curvature geometry from welded flat sheets opens a low-tooling route to objects that would otherwise require expensive dies — a practical option for designers working outside large manufacturing hubs.

The collection also argues for a different reading of surface. The stress concentrations and buckling aren't flaws to be polished out; they're the structural record of the object's making, left visible on mirror-finish steel.

Project information

• Name: JAWF | جَوْف
• Designer: Sarah Naghawi (@studiosarahnaghawi)
• Photographer: ASPIRE Ali Saadi Photography (@aspire_photo)

For Naghawi, JAWF's debut at Amman Design Week 2026 positions hydraulic pressure — not the hammer or the die — as the forming tool, and suggests the technique could carry from one experimental collection into broader regional practice.