Best photos of May 11:Devotees at Shwedagon Pagoda to mark Buddha's Birthday to Bus accident in Sri Lanka
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Stars: Toni Collette, Bella Heathcote, David Wenham, Omari Hardwick
Director: Minkie Spiro
Rating:2/5
Updated: May 11, 2025, 12:56 PM
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The National
9 hours ago
- The National
Why Ammar 808 is moving Tunisia's mezoued folk music to the dance floor
It's the sound of weddings, community gatherings and late-night celebrations. The spiralling wheeze of goatskin bagpipes dances over urgent percussion, while the singer delivers refrains of hope, salutations and streetwise wisdom shaped by Tunisia 's working class. Yet despite its infectious joie de vivre, the mezoued folk music genre remained largely absent from cultural institutions and national television, dismissed for decades as unsophisticated and unworthy of the mainstream exposure. That fractured history drew Tunisian producer Ammar 808, real name Sofyann Ben Youssef, and became the foundation of his vibrant new album Club Tounsi. Across the eight-track collection, mezoued music is reimagined from community hall staple to dance floor filler, with its signature sound backed by sleek synths and the propulsive beats of the Roland TR-808 that inspired Ben Youssef's moniker. The album is part of a continuing national appraisal of the genre, he tells The National 'The way mezoued music has evolved, from being banned on national TV to becoming a source of pride, that story really excites me,' he says. 'I wanted to do a form of homecoming album, something that speaks to people who were once told their culture wasn't refined enough.' The creation process reflects a deeper journey. Club Tounsi marks the culmination of a decade-long path that began with a dodgy computer. 'Around 2012, I was working on an album built around mezoued, but a hard disk crash destroyed everything except a single track,' Ben Youssef recalls. 'A whole album, just like that, gone with the wind. It made me think that perhaps it wasn't the right moment to do it.' The years in between weren't wasted. His deep listening, collection of field recordings and training as a musicologist – the same approach he used on albums Maghreb United in 2018 and Global Control / Invisible Invasion in 2020, which explored North African and South Indian folk music – laid the groundwork for what became Club Tounsi. That rich approach results in barrelling songs layered with meaning. Opening track Douri Douri features the voice of Tunisian folk singer Brahim Riahi sailing over percolating hand drums and pulsing 808s. 'The title means 'turn around in circles' and the arrangement is almost entirely instrumental,' Ben Youssef says. 'There's a moment in the song when the percussion comes in – culturally in mezoued songs or gatherings, that's when someone steps into the middle and does a solo dance, while everyone else claps around them. That image really shaped the track.' Mezoued's history of expressing heartbreak is also heard in Aman Aman, an almost cyberpunk synth remake of an old Tunisian folk song, with new vocals provided by Mariem Bettouhami. 'The lyrics are extremely sad. It's about a person who was left behind,' Ben Youssef says. 'But when you hear the traditional versions, it's full-on rhythm. You cannot sense the sadness in the lyrics through how the arrangement is put. So for me, it was like a challenge to say, 'OK, this woman has a broken heart.' That explains the auto-tune, in a way, because her voice sounds completely broken.' These bold fusions serve a larger purpose, with Ben Youssef hoping Club Tounsi acts as a bridge for a new generation of Tunisians to re-engage with their cultural heritage. He says his homeland is no different from many parts of the region where western cultural trends often take the lead. With Douri Douri garnering more than six million views on TikTok, he believes the recontextualisation – not dilution – of traditional sounds is the way forward. 'Sometimes you don't understand certain music, even if it's from your own tradition. There's this blockage, a social phenomenon of self-rejection and looking for something from beyond borders,' he says. 'My job as producer is bridging that gap, finding ways for young generations to rediscover their tradition in more international fashion.' In doing so, Ben Youssef is also shining a light on Tunisia's bubbling electronic music scene. He sees a kinship between the genre and mezoued – with artists in both often stigmatised for working in forms dismissed as culturally uncouth. Still, he believes the music's future is bright – precisely because it does what all enduring art should: offer a deeper understanding of homeland and history. 'I think what I tried to do in Club Tounsi is imagine the future of the dance floor in Tunisia, or in the Arab world, not from the codes of electronic music but from the codes of our own identity and tradition,' he says. 'When you approach it that way, electronic music becomes just a tool of translation and emotion. I think we have a lot of work to do when it comes to exploring electronic music from within our identity.'
Zawya
15 hours ago
- Zawya
Vingroup and Gulf States Pursue Sustainability-Led Growth as Legacy Powerhouses Reinvent
Vietnam's Vingroup and Gulf states are both rewriting their growth playbooks through state-led sustainability drives, forging a parallel transformation from legacy empires into green innovation hubs. HANOI, VIETNAM - Media OutReach Newswire - 6 June 2025 - Vietnam's Vingroup and Gulf nations share parallel journeys of strategic reinvention, as the old playbooks that delivered decades of growth are showing their limits. While Gulf countries built wealth on fossil fuel, Vingroup created enormous value through real estate and hospitality. Both are now shifting beyond their legacy sectors: Vingroup focuses on digital innovation and sustainability, and the Gulf nations seeks to diversify beyond hydrocarbons. For them, strategic reinvention becomes the logical response. Not disruption for disruption's sake, but calculated transformation grounded in self-preservation and innovation. Their experiences offer valuable lessons on how legacy powerhouses can adapt to structural transformation. A new growth engine that's not oil The UAE and Qatar demonstrate how national strategy can drive transformation. The UAE's Net Zero by 2050 initiative links energy policy with investment decisions and foreign relations. Qatar's National Vision 2030 embeds environmental stewardship into economic planning. More than just being aspirational, these documents translate into concrete investments. For example, the UAE committed over $54 billion to clean energy infrastructure, while Qatar doubled its solar capacity to 1.675 GW by 2025[1], cutting CO₂ emissions significantly. Sovereign wealth funds play crucial roles. Mubadala and QIA direct capital into clean technology as diversification hedges, treating green investments as strategic portfolio moves that reduce long-term risk while capturing growth opportunities. A Southeast Asian reinvention Turning to Southeast Asia, the story Vingroup mirrors many of the same themes of strategic reinvention seen in the Gulf. Originally a property development powerhouse, the conglomerate diversified into other fields such as electric vehicle production, smart technology, and green manufacturing. VinFast, its automotive arm, delivered over 97,000 electric cars in 2024 and targets 200,000 deliveries in 2025. In the context of Vietnam aiming to become a high-income country in its "era of national rise", Vingroup functions as a national champion, building the country's first global EV brand while creating jobs and technological capabilities. The company's manufacturing complex in Hai Phong utilizes green practices and scales to serve both domestic and export markets. The broader ecosystem reflects systematic thinking. VinBus provides electric public transport in major cities. Smart homes in Vinhomes developments showcase energy efficiency. AI and IoT technologies optimize resource use across business lines. Each initiative reinforces the others. When green visions align Shared motivations drive collaboration. Both regions face climate urgency, pursue economic resilience, and seek global relevance. Complementary strengths make partnership logical. For example, the UAE's Masdar built Indonesia's largest floating solar plant[2]. Vingroup's EV arm, VinFast, opened regional showrooms and has signed several MOUs with regional reputable companies. Vietnam and the UAE signed their first trade pact, focusing on technology exchange. These ties leverage unique strengths: the Gulf states brings capital, energy expertise, and execution; Southeast Asia offers manufacturing, markets, and innovation capacity. In their collaboration, the Gulf states and Vingroup prove legacy players can align vision and capital for systemic change. Sustainability, when policy-led, becomes a growth pathway. Strategic reinvention turns challenges into advantages. Hashtag: #Vingroup The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. Vingroup
Khaleej Times
16 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
Emirati architect Azza Aboualam takes UAE climate solutions to Venice Biennale 2025
In May, the days in Venice are longer than usual — so are the queues outside exhibitions in Giardini and the Arsenale complex, the two major hubs of the prestigious Venice Biennale. This year, the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the biennale (which is also known as 'the Olympics' of the art and architectural world) opened to the public on May 10, with around 66 countries displaying their finest cultural productions. The UAE, which has been hosting award-winning pavilions at the biennale since 2014, returns this time with a theme that couldn't be more relevant — the importance of food production, sustainable agrarian practices, greenhouse architecture, and climate strategies in arid regions like the UAE. Commissioned by the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation and supported by the UAE Ministry of Culture, the national pavilion, aptly titled Pressure Cooker, has been curated by architect and academic, Azza Aboualam. Interestingly, Aboualam, who is based between Dubai and Sharjah, is the first Emirati woman curator representing the national pavilion of the UAE at Venice Architecture Biennale. The installations in Pressure Cooker (including multimedia and audio content) invite visitors to examine Aboualam and her team's extensive research, which focuses on the transformative power of greenhouses and how UAE is responding to the challenges of climate change. Aboualam, who is an assistant professor at the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises at Zayed University and co-founder of Holesum Studio, was selected after an open call for proposals to curate the national pavilion of the UAE in 2023. As the pavilion creates unprecedented buzz in Venice, we speak to her about her curatorial concept, the UAE's role in driving solutions to the looming environmental crisis, and what we can learn from local wisdom and indigenous climate systems. Is it true that the Eureka moment for this project came to you when your mother expressed surprise after sampling some desert blueberries you offered her — 'But you need greenhouses to produce these?' she reportedly remarked? Yes, the whole project really started from that moment with my mother. She was shocked when I told her the blueberries we were eating were locally grown. 'In the desert? They must be grown in greenhouses,' she said. That sparked something. I started researching how greenhouses are used in the UAE, and quickly noticed that they are mostly approached from a technical or agricultural angle, not architectural. With Pressure Cooker, we reframe the greenhouse as a spatial and formal composition, in addition to it being a tool to grow food. Through design and experimentation, we explored how architecture can enhance food production in extreme climates — responding to sunlight, heat, and water scarcity. It's not about offering a perfect solution, but rather opening up ways in which architecture can support food security and resilience, particularly in arid environments like the UAE. The installations in Pressure Cooker highlight traditional farming methods and there's all this research that visitors are free to explore. Can you share the idea behind recreating greenhouses as objects of art? In collaboration with Holesum Studio, the exhibition focuses on three greenhouse assemblies, each using a modular 'kit-of-parts' that we designed. Each configuration explores different design variables — roof shape, shading, wall height — and how they impact interior climate and crop growth. We also included regional crops to show what's possible. The aim was to make the research visible, showing the process from fieldwork to construction, and inviting visitors to think about design as experimentation and imagine how architecture and food production can overlap. Greenhouses are sanctuaries for growth and birth but in a way, they also stand as metaphors or seeds for new ideas. They are spaces of protection, growth, and transformation. In many ways, they reflect the design process itself. We saw them as spaces where ideas take root and where adaptation becomes possible. For us, the greenhouse became a way to talk about care, context, and how architecture can create the conditions for change as well as act as third spaces in arid climates. The UAE relies mostly on food imports. As an architect and researcher, what do you believe can be done to make the UAE more self-sufficient in terms of food production? Self-sufficiency in the UAE will require a mix of traditional knowledge and new tools. Pressure Cooker suggests that adaptive, small-scale systems, designed with climate in mind, can be part of the solution. If we rethink food production as a spatial issue, not just a technological one, we can build more resilient and locally attuned infrastructures that communities can access and maintain. What can countries with harsh climates, like the UAE and others in the Gulf region, learn from Pressure Cooker? They can take from Pressure Cooker the idea that architecture can help us think with the land, not just on top of it. Harsh environments aren't obstacles to work around, they are part of the equation. The project proposes small-scale, adaptable systems that respond to heat, light, and resource limits through design. It's not about importing solutions, but developing ones rooted in local conditions. If we pay attention to how land behaves, how it retains heat, where shade falls, and how air moves, we can shape more efficient, resilient spaces for food production, even in the most challenging settings. During your research, you visited farms in the UAE. In your view, how is the UAE coping with cultivating vegetation for the local population and what are the impacts of climate change on this region? In the UAE, agriculture faces significant challenges due to the country's hot climate and limited water resources. However, there have been notable strides toward sustainability. The government has introduced innovations like hydroponics, vertical farming, and controlled-environment agriculture to mitigate these challenges and ensure food security. There's also a growing interest in researching drought-resistant crops and more efficient water management systems. In terms of climate change, the UAE is highly vulnerable. Rising temperatures, water scarcity, and desertification are key concerns, which is why the country is investing in research to develop sustainable agricultural practices. The impacts of climate change are already being felt through increased temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns, which further strain existing agricultural resources and traditional farming methods. What is the best response you've received at Venice so far and what has been your personal takeaway from participating in this biennale? There were many interesting conversations and comments, but one in particular struck me. One of the visitors told me the exhibition reminded her of their farming techniques in Oman — along with the different ways they've adapted to their context and how architecture can play a role in that. That felt like success to me. It meant we created spaces that visitors could visually recognise but also where people could slow down and reflect and realise the potential in their slight alterations and modifications. Personally, my biggest takeaway has been how architecture can function as a bridge — especially on a global scale like the Venice Biennale. It reminded me that sometimes, the most impactful ideas are the ones that emerge slowly, through conversation and contemplation. Venice, as a lagoon, is probably as fragile to the rising tides of climate catastrophe as the UAE. This is a city where nothing is grown locally and most of the food arrives on boats. Does your exhibition feature nods to Venice? Yes, it does and the parallels between Venice and the UAE were intentional. Both are places where sustenance has historically depended on the outside world to meet a large number of its needs, in terms of food and other goods. Venice receives its food by boat, echoing the UAE's own logistical choreography of food imports, as proven by the archival research conducted for the project. In Pressure Cooker, and the space in the pavilion, we reference the Veneto region in the materiality of the space. The rammed earth element, for example, relies on the same recipe as the one we experimented with in Dubai during the design-build phase but here it has a pink undertone due to the materials and colour of sand from the region. The crops that you see are at a Venetian growth phase and echo Venice's climate. Other nods include spatial references and thematic echoes that invite the visitor to think about how geography, climate, and trade shape our food systems and our futures, and how architecture can play a role. What made you first become interested in architecture? My interest in architecture grew out of a fascination, as a young girl, about how spaces influence human behaviour. Growing up and witnessing the urban development of the UAE, I was fascinated by how architecture responded to both the environment and culture, as well as its users. I started seeing architecture not just as buildings but also as a way to solve problems and create environments where people can interact, work, and live more effectively. As an architect, I would describe myself as practical and context-driven. I focus on solutions that work for the specific place and people, whether that's through sustainability, material choices, or just making sure a space feels right for the people who use it, with a focus on designing spaces that have a lasting impact and respond to both their immediate and broader environments. I grew up witnessing rapid change around me, and still do. That pace of transformation made me curious about what we choose to keep, especially in our memories, and how cities are constantly changing. I was drawn to architecture not just for its creative potential but also for how it holds memory and meaning. Research came during my time at Yale and grew tremendously after that. I was curious about architecture and its strong ties to history, form, and systems of care. Becoming the first Emirati curator at the Venice Biennale for its architectural version wasn't something I imagined early on, but it became a way to reflect on where we are as a region and where we might go. It wasn't just about representation. It was about opening a dialogue that felt simultaneously personal and global. Finally, how can architects contribute to a global discourse on climate change? Architects are uniquely positioned to address climate change because the built environment is both a major contributor to global emissions while it could be used as a powerful platform for sustainable solutions. Through material choices, energy strategies, urban planning, and even reframing policy, architects can lead the way in reducing environmental impact. But more than that, architecture shapes how people live, move, and interact with their environments — so it's also about understanding culture and human behaviour and re-framing it through the built environment.
