reda sijiny, urbanphenomena

Reda grew up in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, west of Saudi Arabia, and studied Architecture at the University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, on it’s Eastern coast by the Persian Gulf. This expansion of the horizon was to have a profound effect on his personality, and perpetuated his own “Look East” mindset.

Following a brief stint working for an architecture office in Jeddah, the opportunity to study in Japan materialized. Reda’s interest in type and text, his research on Japan, and particularly those on architectural signage and display design lead him to join the Environmental & Urban information design lab of Professor Masaru Sato, a specialist on sign design, at the Kyushu Institute of design in Fukuoka, Japan. In what is to be labeled later as ‘environmental graphic design’ Reda found the link he had always sought between architecture and visual communication design.

Upon receiving his Master’s degree in Design, Reda joined the architecture office of Shin Takamatsu Architect & Associates in Kyoto, Japan’s historical capital, as junior designer & International projects coordinator, between September 2000 - August 2002.

Tracing the route that Arabic text & type took throughout the centuries along the Silk Road, Reda embarked on a land journey that took him to the ancient centres of Central Asia. The condition and status of design in the Arab world were raised at the 2000 Icograda Millennium congress, Oullim in Seoul, and at the Continental Shift 2001: Sappi World Design Convergence - ICOGRADA Congress, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 11-14 September, 2001, in his lecture entitled “Environmental Graphics and Cultural Identity: Traditional and contemporary examples from Egypt and Saudi Arabia”. It was Reda’s aim that these thoughts would be a prelude to realizing a dialogue on graphic design in the Arab world.

Currently, Reda is running the architecture office/design studio of ‘urbanphenomena: design + research’ in Jeddah. The office is network of architects, interior designers, and visual communication designers, who have teamed up to experiment with the urban environment. A progressive studio/lab, the team seeks to define a local contextual identity, via interdisciplinary work in the fields of architecture, interior architecture, and information design; specifically; way-finding design. As these disciplines merge throughout their work on architectural and interior projects, the team is continuously seeking to explore the relation between architecture and text. In effect, redefining the borders between architecture and visual communication design.