NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), in partnership with Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF), has revealed the winners of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award 2024: Sara Farha and Khaled Shalkha.
The duo are the founders of Datecrete Studio, a design and material innovation studio with a focus on the development of a material derived from date pits. Datecrete, which the artists are seeking to patent, is derived from date pits and contains no concrete or resin, but can be used as an alternative eco-friendly material.
Datecrete Bee Hotel, the project which won the duo the twelfth edition of The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award, will be running in-situ for three months while the process of attracting solitary bees to it will be filmed.
“I congratulate Sarah Farha and Khaled Shalkha, the winners of the twelfth edition of the award, for their outstanding project, Datecrete Bee Hotel. Utilising date pits, the winners have created an innovative and sustainable building material – the first eco-friendly cement of its kind. By promoting environmental awareness and preserving natural resources and the local environment, the work epitomizes the award’s 2023–2024 vision, which is dedicated to the ‘Year of Sustainability’” shared Her Excellency Huda Al Khamis-Kanoo, Founder of ADMAF.
The winners, under the mentorship of Dr. Christianna Bonin and the support of the NYUAD Art Gallery team, will begin an eight-month production period of the development of their project.
