Inaugurated on November 11, 2023, and running until March 10, 2024, the Sharjah Architecture Triennial serves as a metaphor drawing attention to the design and technological innovations within the built environment, particularly in the global south. The exhibition features contributions from 29 architects and studios spanning 25 countries. Building upon Venice's global platform for experimentation at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, the 2023 Triennial embarks on a similar journey, creating space for voices and discussions often overlooked in global exhibitions and unveiling elements that have long existed but remained unseen. With a keen awareness of the global south, but also of the global north, and an understanding of the polarities between them, as articulated by curator Tosin Oshinowo, this second edition of the exhibition focuses on "The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability."
Celebrating everything that exists, especially in the global south where places thrive amidst scarcity, the triennial adopts an optimistic approach, drawing lessons from current situations and revealing the value and sophistication of alternative responses that have emerged due to resource constraints. “We're able to celebrate them. We're able to learn from them”, adds the curator. The triennial aims to comprehend a more sustainable, accessible, and equitable future—a collective effort to address the challenges of climate change, explore the built environment, and embrace under-celebrated regional traditions. Highlighting solutions that have endured the course of time and others responding to contemporary difficulties, "The Beauty of Impermanence" emphasizes the necessity of nuanced hybridity essential for our urbanized world.
Collaborating with practitioners whose architectural discourses align with the theme, the exhibition has assembled globally acclaimed multidisciplinary figures. Notable participants include DAAR – Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti, recipients of the Golden Lion for Best Participant at the 2023 Venice Biennale, Olalekan Jeyifous, honored with the Silver Lion for promising young participants in the International Exhibition, Cave_bureau, presently showcased at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Asif Khan, the designer behind the upcoming Museum of the Incense Road in Al Ula and the Expo 2020 Dubai “Mashrabiya” Entry Portals, Sumaya Dabbagh, principal at Dabbagh Architects, a nominee for the Aga Khan Awards in 2018, and Wallmakers, recognized as ArchDaily’s Best Young Practices in 2020, among others.
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“There Is No Center”: Interview with Tosin Oshinowo, Curator of the 2023 Sharjah Architecture TriennialSpanning five primary sites, including Al Qasimiyah School, the old Al Jubail vegetable market and the old slaughterhouse, the Industrial Area 5, the Sharjah Mall, and Al Madam, the triennial introduces installations seamlessly integrated into their respective localities, raising the question of what it means to be local, in a globalized world. Underlining the significance of the local context, Tosin Oshinowo, about the theme and curatorial statement, explains, “contextual issue of place is important." She further underscores the need to move beyond a global monoculture approach to urbanism and architecture, emphasizing the importance of situating these practices within specific contexts.
If we all think differently and systemically change our approach to our consumption, the way we build, and also to the way we design, we could leave this as a better planet than we have it now. - Tosin Oshinowo.
Creating something for everyone, the exhibition functions as a more expansive platform than traditional architecture exhibitions. With the aspiration to convey an "alternative way of doing things and understanding the challenges that our current trajectory of modernity has created in terms of our climate crisis," the triennial witnessed the emergence of key ideas addressed through various interventions. Read more about the main topics explored at the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial.
Consumer Culture
Cave_bureau, the Nairobi-based office of architects and researchers founded and directed by Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi, has developed its ninth installment of the Anthropocene Museum research series. Situated in Sharjah’s old slaughterhouse, the intervention focuses on the animals consumed in the city, often without consideration of their origins or how they are processed. In the nearby Old Al Jubail Vegetable Market, Thomas Egoumenides disrupts conventional design norms by exploring the aesthetic possibilities of discarded objects, referencing modularity and upcycling systems. In "The Ship of Theseus," he repurposes plastic thread spools and threaded rods, generating architectural scenarios that embrace a circular economy ethos, challenging the prevailing culture of waste. Located at Al Qasimiyah School, the "3-Minute Corridor" pavilion by WallMakers explores global waste by investigating methodologies of material reuse. It creates a dome-like structure using the "Tire Masonry and Unstabilized Sand" technique. Additionally, Asif Khan has implemented "Kalpa," a 9-minute video installation in one of the school's rooms, delving into deep time and the impermanence of life on Earth. The film unfolds in two segments, projected in opposite directions on facing walls, placing the visitor at the heart of the narrative. At the same time, a mirrored floor reflects the images, symbolizing the latent energy of life in the Earth beneath us.
Waste, Colonialism, and the Global South
Sandra Poulson, an Angolan interdisciplinary artist based between London and Luanda, examines "Dust as an Accidental Gift". The ever-present dust in Luanda reflects the city’s socio-economic, political, and cultural divisions: the formally built and paved 'cement city' near the water was occupied by white Portuguese settlers during colonial rule, while Angolan natives lived inland, in mostly informal neighborhoods 'paved by the dust.' In the same venue, Al Qasimiyah School, Formafantasma, a research-based design studio in Milan and Rotterdam, delves into "Cambio", exploring the extraction, production, and distribution of wood products. Initiated at the Serpentine Galleries in London in 2020, the project begins with the hypothesis that "the industry’s tentacular supply chain has grown out of the nineteenth century’s colonial bioprospecting to engulf the entire biosphere." It aims to broaden our understanding of design, transcending the limitations of the final object and its disciplinary boundaries. Moving further east, the Art and Culture Development Foundation of the Republic of Uzbekistan, in collaboration with Wael Al-Awar, focuses on three Modernist buildings in Tashkent that underwent extensive transformations in the past decades. Questioning "what stood behind these transformations" and "what can we see in the gap between the Soviet concept of what buildings in Tashkent should have looked like and how they have been adapted?" the project seeks to look through modernism to find a future vernacular unique to the Uzbek context. On the other hand, Limbo Accra, a collaborative spatial design practice, has taken over the abandoned Sharjah Mall, one of the emirate's largest unfinished building projects, with a public architecture and art pavilion. This pavilion stands as "an eloquent response to the many incomplete and unfinished building projects in the Global South." Seeking to reshape the narrative of this space, Limbo Accra hopes to reverse the stigma attached to unfinished spaces and celebrate their untapped potential by introducing curtains of fabric woven from bands.
Locality, Narratives, and Exchanges
"Play You Are in Sharjah" by Peru-based 51-1 Arquitectos seeks to reconnect the Old Al Jubail Vegetable Market, once slated for demolition, to the city. The architects aim to transform this cultural venue for the triennial into a place of play. Tables, chairs, and shades are continuously reconfigured in response to the movement of the sun and people, resulting in a different square every day. In the same market, Brooklyn-based artist Olalekan Jeyifous crafted a speculative retro-futurist response to Sharjah’s evolving identity and cultural significance by imagining and reconfiguring various building typologies and city-planning strategies that emerged with the city’s rapid urbanization. Al Borde, an architecture firm established in Quito, Ecuador, explored "What does it mean to be local?" and established a welcoming threshold to Al Qasimiyah School, the second public venue of the triennial. “Raw Threshold” forms a shade that creates favorable conditions for habitation, using natural materials that allow for intimate discourse with the immediate context. Dia Mrad's "Power Shifts" explores the prevalence of solar panels on the rooftops of Beirut, sparking a critical discussion on the complex relationship among the built environment, energy systems, and societal dynamics. This photographic installation is an investigation of Lebanon's economic collapse. Located in Al Madam, a village taken over by shifting sands, the “Concrete Tent” designed by DAAR- Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti stands as an experimental architectural preservation project, dealing with the paradox of permanent temporariness, a state of dislocation and relocation triggered by political, economic, and environmental shifts.
Traditional Materials and Recovering Techniques
Sumaya Dabbagh, a Saudi architect and founder of Dabbagh Architects, "taps into the collective memory held in materials around us" with her intervention “Earth to Earth”. This pavilion comprises two curved walls constructed from mudbrick, forming a partially enclosed space that encourages visitors to engage with the structure in various ways. Henry Glogau and Aleksander Kongshaug worked with bamboo and crystallized jute fabric, to create an architectural installation that leverages environmental challenges as opportunities for resource creation. The intervention also showcases the potential scalability and replicability of mobile, prefabricated, and adaptable infrastructural interventions. Also featured at Al Qasimiyah School is Natura Futura, a practice from Babahoyo, Ecuador. They explored the decline of floating structures on the Babahoyo River and rehabilitated a floating house for a family that has lived on and been sustained by the river for more than 30 years. By recovering contextual artisanal techniques, using bamboo, balsa, and wood, the project aims to implement public policies that allow for the regenerative inhabitation of Babahoyo’s riverbanks. In the Old Al Jubail Vegetable Market, Miriam Hillawi Abraham, a multi-disciplinary designer from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, experiments with “The Museum of Artifice” and explores architectural conservation, digital twins, and heritage. Working with salt, the project introduces Lalibela's sacred architecture into Sharjah in a transformed appearance, bringing along its associated myths and traversing the Red Sea and the Arabian Peninsula.
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