The 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial (SAT) will take place from November 11th, 2023 to March 10th, 2024, under the theme "The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability". Focusing on how scarcity in the Global South has led to a culture of re-use, re-appropriation, innovation, collaboration, and adaptation, the second edition of the architectural exhibition, curated by Tosin Oshinowo, aims to shift global conversations towards creating a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future.
Aiming to find innovative design solutions, The President of Sharjah Architecture Triennial (SAT), Hoor Al Qasimi, and the Curator Tosin Oshinowo have recently announced the names of the first participants in the 2023 SAT, whose works explore innovative design solutions in the cultural and historic context of Sharjah through public installations and collaborative projects. The list of participants includes so far Al Borde, Cave_bureau, DAAR - Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, Limbo Accra, Miriam Hillawi Abraham, MOE+ Art Architecture (MOE+AA), Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Ola Uduku & Michael Collins, Sandra Poulson, Thao Nguyen Phan, Wallmakers, Yara Sharif & Nasser Golzari, and Yussef Agbo-Ola.
SAT will offer year-round programming that engages a wide range of audiences in architecture conversations at the local, city, and regional levels including an upcoming exhibition called "A Journey into Architecture Archives: Beirut, Cairo, Rabat", curated by George Arbid. Opening on May 13th, the exhibition showcases the architecture archives of three institutions in the Arab world. The full list of participants and programming details for Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023 will be announced later this year.
Read on to discover the ideas and projects of the first 13 participants in the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial.
- Contemplating Sharjah as a place defined by fast change and civic transience, Ghanaian spatial design studio Limbo Accra will present a public art and architecture installation that responds to the present stasis of an incomplete mall.
- DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti will present an experimental preservation project that deals with the paradox of permanent temporariness.
- Focusing on the relationship between materials, context, and landscape, an installation by Angolan artist Sandra Poulson will analyze the ever-present dust in Luanda to reflect on the city’s economic, social, and cultural framework.
- Ola Uduku & Michael Collins will present works by British-Nigerian architect Alan Vaughan-Richards (1925-1989) and review his environmentally-conscious explorations that would make up the canon of West African Tropical Modernism.
- The effect of climate change on Sharjah’s biodiversity is central to projects such as a fabric-based temple by London/Amazon-based architect Yussef Agbo-Ola that will honor non-human life and endangered species from the region.
- Lagos-based practice MOE+ Art Architecture (MOE+AA) will be embedded in Sharjah’s industrial environment – creating a moment of ecological pause that will act as a counterpoint to the man-made, mechanized landscapes that have become ubiquitous across the Emirates.
- Nairobi-based architects Cave_bureau will expand their long-term research program of the Anthropocene Museum by occupying a disused slaughterhouse, projecting the geometries of a Neolithic cave to allude to the shared meanings between these two geologies of varying impermanence.
- Inventive material explorations will be undertaken by the Indian practice Wallmakers, who will present a naturally-sculpted pavilion that looks to reimagine the possibilities of building with sand.
- Demonstrating the geographical breadth of the Triennial, and the international implications of its inquiries, a film by Thao Nguyen Phan will highlight the past and present violence and destruction that occurs in the Mekong Delta, interspersed with footage from Sharjah.
- Reflecting on the Triennial’s themes of re-appropriation and re-use, Nifemi Marcus-Bello will present an adaptable pavilion crafted using local weaving techniques that will house the studio's explorations of indigenous contemporary design solutions emerging out of Lagos.
- Architects Yara Sharif & Nasser Golzari will assemble discarded, disparate components in a challenge to the commodification of resources and consumers.
- Multi-disciplinary Ethiopian designer Miriam Hillawi Abraham will present The Museum of Artifice, a life-sized facsimile of a Lalibela church façade set in Sharjah’s old Al Jubail Vegetable Market.
- Ecuadorian studio Al Borde will envision a shaded space that directly engages with the outdoor architecture of Al Qasimiyah School, utilizing sustainable, locally-sourced materials that are in abundance.
