The second edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial is themed “The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability,” celebrating the architecture of tomorrow that celebrates the traditions of yesterday for the sake of sustainability for all.
The current session of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, which will run until March 10, 2024, is an extension of Sharjah’s approach to pursuing its progress and prosperity based on culture, knowledge, and preserving heritage and universal human values.
Architecture with social, ecological dimensions
Sheikha Hoor bint Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, President of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial Foundation, pointed out that since its inception thanks to the efforts of Sheikh Khalid Al Qasimi, the Emirate has placed its reliance on a multidisciplinary methodology in building a clear concept of architecture that is rooted in social and environmental concerns and strikes a balance between preserving heritage and its contemporary form of use.
The second Sharjah Architecture Triennial explores creative and innovative designs based on the use of natural and indigenous resources, through their embodiment in projects presented by 29 participants from different parts of the world, gathered in the Emirate. The participants not just share insights and provide an analysis of contemporary issues, they reveal the relationship between architecture, the environment, sustainability and resource depletion, leading to a gulf between what is known as the Global South and the Global North.
Discussing her conception of the Triennial, Curator Tosin Oshinowo started from the fact that the narrowness of living in the Global South has established a culture of use, reuse, and innovation by presenting a new approach to thinking that stems from scarcity, not abundance. Oshinowo, a Nigerian architect and designer, emphasised that the solution is to build a sustainable future within the present which lies in the traditions of architecture and design inherited and renewed over generations.
Oshinowo said: “This edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial offers design solutions that stem from scarcity and redirect the prevailing discourse on sustainability centred on technical innovations towards an approach that adopts building solutions according to the local context, sharing resources, and reusing waste, as well as exploring technologies that embrace the idea that everything is temporary and can be developed and restored, in line with nature, not against it.”
Driven by the concern that scarcity conditions have spread throughout the Global South, practitioners and specialists in architecture and design who have made their work an organisational field for cultural representation in architecture, a space to celebrate identity, and a way to balance nature and the machine, have come together in the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.
Through their work, interactions and workshops, the experts present a different understanding of the context of place that has been shaped by the interaction of building science with social norms and everyday practices.
Free for public
In order to let everyone benefit from the invaluable insights and outcomes of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, the organisers have decided to make the attendance and participation in its various engaging activities free.
The activities of the opening sessions and various workshops, held from November 11 to 13, were rich and varied in content and attracted a great deal of attention and not just from those interested in architecture and design.
The programme featured a number of tours of the Triennial projects in its main sites. An example of works rich in concepts and meaning, comes the installation work by Keef_Peru in the old slaughterhouse of Sharjah, which reflects various stages of change through the sounds and performances that it places throughout the place.
In the Madam area of Sharjah, visitors can discover the installation titled “The Concrete Tent”, designed by Dar Sandy Hilal and Alessandro Petti. It is a work that was implemented for the first time in the Dheisheh Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem, and is being rebuilt to provide a shared space in a temporary situation aminds the permanent state of homelessness of refugees.
The various artistic designs in the Sharjah Architecture Triennial offer space for contemplation and constructive criticism. However, delving deeper into contexts, connotations and human dimensions requires knowledge and sciences based on reliable research. The organisers have therefore released the book, Field Notes on Scarcity, as part of the Triennial, which offers readers a clear picture of what scarcity and challenges look like.
The book, Field Notes on Scarcity presents architectural solutions that go beyond the boundaries of the environment and spotlighted through the reflections, perceptions and dialogues of 60 researchers from across the Global South. This is what makes the second Sharjah Architecture Triennial a unique research and knowledge platform for architecture and adaptive engineering.
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