The Sharjah Architecture Triennial has named a heavyweight curator for its third edition and released a commendably lucid curatorial statement.
The curator is Vyjayanthi Rao. She’s an anthropologist, writer, artist, and curator based between New York and Mumbai. Currently a visiting professor at Yale University’s school of architecture, her work centres on urbanism in India and the States. She has published extensively on these subjects; curatorial projects include the exhibition Multiplicity at the 2022 Lisbon Architecture Triennale and Seeking Refuge and Making Home at the Center for Architecture in New York (2023). She also participated as an artist in the 2016 Kochi Biennale, the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Chicago Architecture Biennale in 2023, and 2025’s Berlinale Film Festival.
Hoor Al Qasimi, SAT’s President and Director, said Rao’s practice offers “vital insights into urbanisation” and “speaks directly to the Triennial’s mission in terms of our commitment to research, innovation and knowledge-sharing”.
Joining Rao as associate curator is her long-term collaborator Tau Tavengwa; the two worked together for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale. The co-founder of CS Studio, an interdisciplinary urbanism studio, Tavengwa is also the editor of its Cityscapes magazine – an always-interesting occasional publication dedicated to exploring urbanism from a Global South perspective.
The curatorial statement – available here – is commendably clear in its aims: “Traditional architecture practice is limited by its professionalization and standardisation, often focusing on spectacle and iconic structures, or offering context-free ‘solutions’ to problems that demand localised responses. Our unsettled world calls for a different approach – one that reimagines the urban through values of interdependence, hospitality and care; that creates spaces for shared life, mutual recognition and collective possibility; and that facilitates processes for living and prospering together, rather than merely imposing form … To shape meaningful futures, we must work collectively, drawing from regional histories, and remain open to difference”.
In short, this third iteration of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial offers an anthropological approach to the built environment, essentially a people-centred manifesto. “By designing urban life around interdependence, care and hospitality, we can use architecture not just to shape space, but to rebuild social bonds and reimagine how we live together” said Rao in a Dezeen interview.
That of course should be key to any new urban architecture these days: the places where people live, work, meet, eat should surely reflect more than late-model capitalism, dirigiste top-down planning, or theoretical musings about voids and angles. As Rao told Dezeen: “We chose ‘Architecture Otherwise’ to challenge the idea that architecture is just about iconic buildings or standardised solutions. Instead, we see it as a way to build meaningful connections – rooted in local realities, informed by global conditions and open to difference”.
So it will be interesting to see how ‘Architecture Otherwise’ is put into practice. We’re assured that it will “challenge everyone who encounters it – expanding the view of those who feel empowered, while inviting those on the margins to speak, share and shape”. This appears to imply exhibits and interventions that explore how urbanisation is unfolding in diverse contexts – the Triennial participants will be able to use a range of tools, methods and spatial interventions to create “the kind of settings often deemed marginal”.
There will be the usual residencies, installations, performances, exhibitions, demonstration and story-telling events; those participants will undoubtedly include non-traditional contributors, cultural institutions and communities as well as designers, makers and possibly even architects too. “Through drawing, building, voicing, sounding, listening and gathering, we will open up new spaces for action, exploring architecture’s place – and potential – in a hyper-urbanised world”.
SAT03 will take place from November 2026 at various locations across Sharjah.
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