DHADH is an homage to the Arabic language, and is named after the letter that is unique to it. Long-term visual experimentation and rumination exploring the essence of her mother tongue led Lujain Abulfaraj to distil it down to its purist essence. These forms are the literal buildings blocks of a learning tool she believes capable of instilling a sense of ownership and engagement through play. These experiments were born of a personal concern: observing that her son found no enjoyment in his Arabic class at nursery nor his Arabic books at home, Abulfaraj was frustrated to encounter a teaching method that lacked interactivity – with students copying words by rote, repeating the form monotonously until they had filled a sheet of paper. Finding no scope for deep connection to the dynamism of a word and its many levels of meaning, and no access to the nuance and beauty of the Arabic language for her son, she sought a new means of education, away from this robotic passivity.

During Tanween, Abulfaraj has built on the knowledge gained through her typographically-led design practice and in Lara Assouad’s Modular Arabic Typography workshop at Tashkeel, to explore new, playful and engaging letterforms that focus on the essence of the language. Distillation has allowed her to understand the essential patterns of Arabic letters – simplification has been the route to an intuitive, pure relationship with the language and its nuances.

Comprising eight unique modules that can be combined and recombined to create all 28 Arabic letters, Abulfaraj has expanded her typographic experiments into huge foam structures with a trilateral purpose – as a furniture piece, a plaything and a letterform. Composed of sturdy foam and strong, resilient fabrics, the pieces have been designed to encourage perpetual play and with children's energy in mind.

DHADH dispels the false notion that Arabic is rigid and circumscribed by complex rules. Here, the letterforms are distilled and refined, broken down into simpler pieces that the child can interact with. As they build their own forms they build a closer, more intuitive relationship with Arabic and, as the letters become full of play and enjoyment, so too does the language.