Commissions and projects for Sharjah Architecture Triennial

Sharjah Architecture Triennial has outlined the new commissions and site-specific projects for its 2023 edition, due to open 11 November.

Under the title The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability and curated by architect Tosin Oshinowo, the Triennial will feature 30 architects, designers and studios from 26 countries; between them, they will explore what the Triennial terms “innovative design solutions borne out of conditions of scarcity in the Global South”.

Noted for her environmentally and socially responsive attitudes to architecture, Oshinowo’s theme is inspired by her own design philosophy of contextual solutions. More specifically, the Triennial aims to examine how cultures of re-use, re-appropriation, collaboration and adaptation can help to deliver a more sustainable, resilient and equitable future. Participants will home in on solutions that draw from indigenous knowledge, explore the potential of local materials, and examine the climate resilience and adaptability of communities around the world.

There are three key strands to this:

Projects highlighting the versatility of natural materials as a building resource include ETA’DAN by Hive Earth Studio (Ghana). A multi-functional wall made of rammed earth and agro-waste with seating and steps for rest and relaxation, it will demonstrate sustainability through resource sharing and waste reuse.

Employing mud as material is also the foundation for EARTH TO EARTH by Sumaya Dabbagh (Saudi Arabia/UAE), a curved wall structure that reflects the fundamental circularity and duality of a material which embodies both solidity and fluidity.

Back to the Future from Hunnarshala Foundation (India) is an exhibition that will explore how natural materials and traditional building skills can strengthen marginalised voices while addressing the extractive impact of modern market economies on biodiversity and indigenous knowledge.

Also acknowledging indigenous practices, artist and architect Abeer Seikaly (Jordan ) will present a mobile cultural space that celebrates the significance of weaving within Bedouin communities. The construction will use locally sourced bamboo and goat’s hair, envisioning a circular future whilst evoking the forgotten relationship between people and the land.

Projects will also highlight innovative responses, and resistance to, waste culture. Ship of Theseus by Thomas Egoumenides (France/Tunisia) embraces a circular approach using discarded plastic spools and threaded rods. Repurposing these materials to craft an architectural installation, the project becomes a symbol of resistance to a throwaway culture.

A project by MOE+ Art Architecture (MOE+AA, Nigeria) will be based in one of Sharjah’s industrial zones, exploring life amid the area’s vacant lots and unutilised spaces. WE REST AT THE BIRD’S NEST is an installation constructed from organic waste and scaffolding that asks what happens when space is adapted to create a collective point of rest.

Addressing the extractive processes that often underpin design will also get a good deal of attention. Cambio (2020-2023) is an ongoing project by Formafantasma (Italy/Netherlands) which investigates the wood industry’s origins in colonial bioprospecting in the nineteenth century; it explores the supply chain’s environmental impacts and seeks to expand design beyond finished products by integrating forestry, legislation, science and activism.

Highlighting the issue of waste colonialism, clothing brand BUZIGAHILL (Uganda) creatively transforms second-hand clothing waste from the West and sells it back to the Global North. Its reconstruction of its production studio, staged as RETURN TO SENDER, showcases the resourcefulness of sub-Saharan Africans in harnessing waste as a resource. Bales of unwashed second-hand clothing have been acquired for the performance from a sorting centre in one of Sharjah’s Free Zones, where migrant workers unpack, sort and repack unwanted clothes collected in Europe.

Power Shifts is a photographic installation by Dia Mrad (Lebanon) that looks at his homeland’s economic collapse using aerial imagery of the proliferation of solar panels on Beirut’s rooftops. The panels become manifestations of the crisis itself, inviting viewers to reflect on not only the visual impact of the economic collapse on the cityscape but also its profound effect on the lives of its residents.

SHJ 1X72– X89 by Olalekan Jeyifous (USA/Nigeria) offers a retro-futurist vision of the region. Set on Sharjah’s Bank Street and its ‘heritage areas’, it will imagine an alternative architecture of sustainable practices and local typologies, in tune with the climatic conditions of the region and the social rhythms of its inhabitants.

Projects exploring how natural landscape systems and cultural narratives can be integrated into new urban frameworks will use abandoned sites in Sharjah as a catalyst for ideas. The old Al Jubail Vegetable Market, which closed in 2015 but was saved from demolition by SAT in 2019, is a classic example; 51-1 Arquitectos (Peru) will turn the adjacent into a public space for communal activity called Play You Are in Sharjah. It features tables, chairs and board games that are reconfigured according to the position of the sun throughout the day.

Elsewhere, the abandoned Al Madam ‘ghost village’ – part of a series of modernist settlements built in the 1970s to house nomadic groups – will be reframed as a symbol of enduring transience. DAAR – Sandra Hilal & Alessandro Petti (Italy/Palestine/Sweden) will use fabric to cover the ruins of the village; and ultimately the project will be reclaimed by the dunes like the buildings beneath, a poetic reminder of the inevitability of impermanence.

Honouring architecture as a space for ritual, performance and tradition, Yussef Agbo-Ola (UK and Brazil) will present JABALA 9: ASH CLEANSING TEMPLE. This structure – honouring Bedouin, Yoruba and Cherokee cultures – will be built from organic materials such as jute, hemp and cotton yarn and illustrated with cosmological motifs, inviting visitors to partake in collective incense burning and breathing ceremonies within.

The Museum of Artifice by Miriam Hillawi Abraham reimagines the sacred rock-hewn churches of Lalibela in Northern Ethiopia as constructed entirely from blocks of salt in a nod to the material culture of Sharjah and its historic relationship with Ethiopia. The structure will eventually be dismantled and its salt blocks returned to the merchant for re-use in agriculture and construction, only leaving behind remnants of salt, dust, and memories.

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