Design Week in Jerusalem: Israeli creative talent on show

Everyone's doing it. As design as a recognisable commercial and cultural activity continues to grow globally, eminently marketable and endlessly consumable, city after city seems to be launching a design week. Jerusalem is no exception. 25 November to 4 December sees the first Design Week in Jerusalem (with its interesting syntax), organised by the Jerusalem Center for Design, which features the types of events you'd expect from such a festival: a conference, an exhibition, a design competition and, naturally, the obligatory closing party.

Curated by Israeli product designer Tal Gur, known best for his lighting designs in plastic, and conceived by young Israeli designer David Keller (both of whom are graduates of Jerusalem's respected Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design), 'Time 02' is a group show that takes as its conceptual starting point the culturally rich, but politically complex, city in which it appears. Located in the basement of the former 19th-century Hansen Hospital, which was established to treat lepers, a different kind of support is at work here: the exhibition offers a platform to graduates of the country's various design departments.

Limited-edition and one-off design forms a large part of the practice landscape in Israel, due, to a large degree, to the limited industrial-design opportunities domestically. Through this highly concept-led, often ready-made-oriented, work, a number of, at times provocative, ideas have been explored in 'Time 02' that engage critically with Jerusalem's social, political, religious and architectural identities.

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, a group show entitled 'Pâte Feuilletée' is drawing to a close at the coastal city's latest design space, the Paradigma Gallery, which opened earlier this year. Curated by established designer, Ezri Tarazi, who is also head of Bezalel's industrial design department, and the gallery's owner, Anat Benvenisti, the exhibition explores, as its name might suggest, 'the way that the raw material is aligned and the way that materials can rest in layers, representing either natural or artificial processes', as Tarazi puts it.

This idea of material strata that celebrate their stratification is made manifest in the work of, among others, David Amar, whose Campana-esque 'Raymond' tables use chaos as an organisational paradigm, and Nir Meiri, who has designed a bench into which a pair of leather-upholstered stools sit neatly, providing a highly graphic, highly pleasurable cross-section-like side view.

These two small-scale shows demonstrate once again the conceptually strong, materially resourceful design practice to be found in Israel's growing design scene. And with more editions of Design Week in Jerusalem certain to follow, this is, like a piece of pâte feuilletée, just the first layer.