LA COMPENSACIÓN POR LA PROSPERIDAD…

por Tosin Oshinowo

The last thirty months refined my thoughts on the second Sharjah Architecture Triennial. The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability is a metaphor that draws attention to the built environment’s design and technological innovations visible in the global South—these solutions are borne out of conditions of scarcity that are working within the limitations of the natural resources available. In contrast, the last 400 years have seen the global North exercise an approach to scarcity, through cornucopianism, which stems from the optimism that our natural resources, though limited, can be extended infinitely. The global North, through land conquest, slavery, resource extraction, and technological advancement—all justified by mythological and religious beliefs [1] has encouraged the positioning that mankind has infinitely been ordained to multiply with dominion over all things. Even today, we still see remnants of exploitation through the brutal conflict and displacement of communities by conquering powers that be.

A global pandemic, wars, and the constant threat of environmental disasters mark our current time. In addition, the impact of industrialisation has expanded all our desires and refinements. The end of WW2 marked a historical transition, where the free market replaced the colonial models of extraction and expansion. The culture of consumerism, the result of the free-market, and with it, voluntary exchange, promises a more equitable prosperity for all but remains routed in the geosocial boundaries of the previous era. This organising system further refines the divide and continues inequalities between the regions.

Our era, indeed, is marked by an improved standard of living and life expectancy; however, that prosperity could be short-lived with the looming challenge of climate change, ensuing from a broken contract between humanity and ecology. This reality and fragility are painfully apparent, especially in the Global South, where the systems, innovations, and structures formed by imperial and industrial powers, through exploitation and extraction of natural resources, skewed development away from the South’s direct benefit. The Beauty of Impermanence is a collective effort to shift this narrative and explore the built environment, embracing the under-celebrated traditions of the region to comprehend a more sustainable, more accessible, and more equitable future.

Sharjah is an incredible venue to explore these ideas. The emirate intentionally pushes the discourse of critical thinking through its many programmes supporting education, the arts, culture, and heritage initiatives that amplify current and past histories. The old city’s Souk district has been restored to itspre-1960s condition, celebrating the typology of buildings adapting to the extreme climate, while highlighting the important relationship of pedestrians to the street, in stark contrast to the automobile-designed megacities of the region. Sharjah is also in the foreground of preserving its modern historic buildings, ensuring that the landmarks and spaces of communal and daily practice are preserved to continue toinform innovative thinking and inspire unconventional ideas in the present day. The Triennial’s main sites—the Al-Qasimiyah School and Al Jubail Vegetable Market are both modern historic buildings that havebeen preserved and adapted, giving us a glimpse into an important period in the UAE’s history.

Sharjah’s socio-economic positioning has also played an important role in localising our interventions. As we ideate the importance of indigenous practices and design, in contrast to globalised technology that affords us to detach from the material language of our locality, we find ourselves questioning what it means to be local. Through knowledge exchange, the Triennial has encouraged exploring this specificity and a locality through these material, socio-economic, and geographic perspectives. Sharjah will play backdrop and actor for the exhibition, allowing participants to create a point of exchange and transpose ideas through site-specific interventions.

As this exhibition has evolved, we have categorised the practices into three overlapping strands:

1. Renewed Contextual showcases responses in the built environment that pay homage to the pre-industrialised society better in balance with the natural world. These groups of practitioners and artists rethink tradition, holistically engage with the concept of upcycling and recycling, champion the reuse of materials, and posit gentler versions of modernity. These solutions tend to manifest with strong visual markers, as the building’s materiality is dependent on its location, and its locality is equally dependent on its materiality. That is to say, context is determined by tectonics, coupled and composed through social norms and daily practice, and this coupling, in turn, produces an aesthetic language based on the context and contextuality of place.

2. Extraction Politics demonstrates responses to the often-tense relationship between our organising structures, economics and ecology. Here, participants document, record, and respond to the extractive processes that underpin design. The economics of city development, the free market that encourages the movement of goods for profit, and modern society’s consumerism - have all resulted in excessive waste production and encroached detrimentally on our natural environment.The results of these encroachments will form the basis of this group of participants' exhibits as we showcase creative solutions that are synonymous with the ideology of replenishment and renewal and highlight the importance of responsible balance.

3. Intangible Bodies celebrates the ephemeral nature of civilisation’s interaction with the natural environment. Here, participants draw from spirituality, empathy and care, decoloniality, civic status, and futurism to engage in acts of world-building and respond to the pressing concerns of our present, sometimes blurring the lines between the intangible and the material. This strand is focused on the interstitial in our urbanism; participants draw poetic narratives with substantive, actionable responses towards a suggestive and constructive utopian ideal. They navigate the architecture of ephemeralstructures that manifest through socio-political and economic constructs in our cities and draw inspiration from our compelling relationship with ground conditions and the association we place on it regarding progress and prosperity.

Architects, Designers, Artists, and Thought-leaders from around the world whose practice resonates with the conditions of the global South have a unique and emergedduality of perspective on this subject matter. Well-positioned by my curatorial Advisory board, I gained access to locations and perspectives that geographies and language would have made considerably challenging. Joined by a mix of 29 emerging and established practitioners, we have a regional makeup of 32% from sub-Saharan Africa, 12% from the Middle East, 12% across South America, with the rest equally dispersed across Europe, North America, and South East Asia. In addition, we have an equitable balance between genders.

As we tackle this topic of responsibility to create a balance between our humanity and ecology, we are also conscious of the task instilled in us to impact mindsets with this exhibition. Post-pandemic, austerity has become the norm across both regions, which is a stark reminder of how interconnected and reliant we all are on the global system. Much of our current education and practice involves designing with the illusion of surplus without the consciousness that we operate in finite conditions. Circularity and regeneration must urgently become normalised constraints in our approach to education and practice to bring about systemic change.

As Architects, we are well-positioned to champion an alternate trajectory with solutions for human and ecologically-centred narratives for the future. For example, exhibitions are natural propagators of waste production by the nature of their itinerant construct. We have aimed as much as possible to mitigate this. Although not carbon neutral, we have encouraged participants to consider and execute their showcases with a no-waste mindset. We have done this by local sourcing, utilising virgin materials with a clear, actionable plan for a second life after the exhibition, and using materials initially considered waste.

Our exhibition design is focused on the repurposing of building materials. By forming relationships with Sharjah’s industrial area, we have been able to lease materials for use in the exhibition that will be returned afterwards. This shift in mindset has also been utilised in the SAT 02’s merchandise. Our tote bags and buckets hats, designed in Sharjah, are made exclusively from recycled denim jeans responsibly sourced in Uganda. When the Foundation commissioned this progressively climate-responsible initiatives, none of us could have imagined the fascinating and frustrating process that would ensue in the acquiring and processing of resources in this manner. The complexity of what conceptually appears to be quite simple is far from a homogeneous process and requires a sophisticated series of actions to execute. What this did bring to the foreground is that intentionality alone is not enough and that the scaling of such initiatives in themselves must be understood to execute.

The second Sharjah Architecture Triennial is intended as a refreshingly focused architecture and design exhibition, showcasing solutions that have been with us for generations, as well as solutions that are an immediate and measured response to our current constraints with the essential nuanced hybridity urgently required in our urbanised world. ‘Field Notes on Scarcity’ is a conceptual publication as part of the exhibition. This publication was conceived as a snapshot of the field response to this Triennial theme through the prompt What has been an impactful and effective response to Scarcity? The result is anoverview of 59 voices engaging with these ideas in myriad ways across their larger practices.

What lessons can be learnt from these autonomous self-organising systems that work within the limitations of the natural resources available? Can these systems be scaled to address our densification and curb carbonisation, in effect, planetary scarcity? We must look at how the regions of the global south have dealt with the limitation of resources as a suggestion to combat our planet's natural capacity to neutralise pollution, which is becoming dangerously unattainable. What is wrong with our current value system? Why does our acknowledgement of progress negate the passive and natural occurring - for example, our preference for clinically hard surfaces as opposed to the natural ground or our obsession with air conditioning and plastic? When these notions of progress are scaled, they significantly harm our natural environment.

The cornucopian model is now unattainable; the Industrial Revolution and subsequent Great Acceleration have propelled us all into an unnatural run on our natural resources and direct conflict with ecology balance. It is essential to press that we must move beyond the acknowledgement of a wrong or an apology for the past from the north to the south, but a collective and constructive resolve for systemic change for the future. This exhibition does not aim to dictate solutions but serves as a convergence to re-think optimistically our approach in the hope that history will judge us kindly.

[1] The Bible, Genesis 1 vs 26-31 - And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, andreplenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and overevery living thing that moveth upon the earth.iption

Trienal de Arquitectura de Sharjah - La Belleza de la Impermanencia

Curadora: Tosin Oshinowo

Arquitectos: Al Borde

Colaboradores Al Borde: María Fernanda Heredia & Melissa Naranjo

Asesor Estructural: Patricio Cevallos

Ubicación: Sharjah, Emiratos Árabes Unidos

Area: 340.00 m2

Diseño: 2022-2023

Construcción: 2023

Producción: Equipo SAT

Postes de Madera: SEWA (Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority)

Renders: Pinxcel

Fotos: Danko Stjepanovic - Cortesía de Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Shahbaz Ahmed y Al Borde

ENTRE LO DISPONIBLE Y LO BIODEGRADABLE

En un contexto donde todo está al alcance, donde todo puede ser adquirido desde cualquier lugar de origen, y el enfoque de desarrollo capitalista ha erosionado la identidad local hasta el punto de destruir por completo vecindarios históricos, surge una pregunta fundamental: ¿Qué significa ser local?

La escuela Al Qasimiyah ha dejado su función como escuela primaria y se ha convertido en una de las sedes de la SAT (Sharjah Architecture Triennial). En ese cambio de vocación, la escuela pasa de ser un espacio contenido en un muro perimetral cuya misión era cuidar a los niños, a buscar convertirse en un espacio abierto que se conecte con sus alrededores y la ciudad. Esta apertura crea nuevas formas de ocupar el espacio. Los nuevos accesos peatonales Norte y Oeste convergen en una plataforma, que brinda la oportunidad de remarcar este punto de encuentro y crear un umbral de bienvenida.

Este umbral se define mediante una sombra que crea condiciones para habitar el exterior. Requiere una estructura de soporte que puede ser construida con cualquier material disponible. Pero en este contexto, donde "todo" está "disponible", este concepto se vuelve borroso. Pensar en la economía del esfuerzo nos da un camino de búsqueda de eficiencia máxima, al transformar la materia prima en elementos arquitectónicos y, de esta manera, reducir al máximo la energía utilizada en la producción, transformación y transporte de los materiales.

La Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority (SEWA) ha iniciado un proceso de reemplazo de postes de madera por unos metálicos, lo que ha dejado un centenar de postes de madera inmunizada almacenados en su depósito. Se seleccionan los mejores, se cortan las puntas dañadas y así se obtiene un paquete de troncos de distintas medidas, lo suficientemente altos para armar una estructura de la se suspende la sombra.

La sombra se crea a partir de esteras de palma, un material ampliamente presente en el lugar, utilizado en diversas aplicaciones, desde los pisos de las casas hasta los cielos rasos de los souks, e incluso en cerramientos. Estas esteras pueden adquirirse fácilmente en cualquier bazar, ofreciendo una amplia variedad de tipos, tamaños, formas y texturas.

Esta aproximación al proyecto resulta en una obra cruda y táctil, elaborada con materiales naturales que nos permiten establecer un discurso íntimo y directo con el lugar, enraizándonos en él. El umbral cumplirá la función de dar la bienvenida a los visitantes y, al mismo tiempo, será una forma de experimentar y poner a prueba el uso de este nuevo espacio, atrayendo la atención de quienes residen y trabajan en el área, invitándolos a cruzar sus límites.

El proyecto perdurará mientras el espacio lo demande, ofreciendo la flexibilidad de ser montado y desmontado en otros lugares. Y cuando llegue el momento de finalizar su uso, los postes utilizados podrán retornar al depósito, esperando un nuevo propósito, mientras que las esteras, al ser tan versátiles, podrán encontrar fácilmente otro uso. Llegará el día en que estos materiales se degraden de forma natural, cerrando el ciclo de su vida de manera armoniosa con la naturaleza.

THE TRADE-OFF FOR PROSPERITY…

by Tosin Oshinowo

The last thirty months refined my thoughts on the second Sharjah Architecture Triennial. The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability is a metaphor that draws attention to the built environment’s design and technological innovations visible in the global South—these solutions are borne out of conditions of scarcity that are working within the limitations of the natural resources available. In contrast, the last 400 years have seen the global North exercise an approach to scarcity, through cornucopianism, which stems from the optimism that our natural resources, though limited, can be extended infinitely. The global North, through land conquest, slavery, resource extraction, and technological advancement—all justified by mythological and religious beliefs [1] has encouraged the positioning that mankind has infinitely been ordained to multiply with dominion over all things. Even today, we still see remnants of exploitation through the brutal conflict and displacement of communities by conquering powers that be.

A global pandemic, wars, and the constant threat of environmental disasters mark our current time. In addition, the impact of industrialisation has expanded all our desires and refinements. The end of WW2 marked a historical transition, where the free market replaced the colonial models of extraction and expansion. The culture of consumerism, the result of the free-market, and with it, voluntary exchange, promises a more equitable prosperity for all but remains routed in the geosocial boundaries of the previous era. This organising system further refines the divide and continues inequalities between the regions.

Our era, indeed, is marked by an improved standard of living and life expectancy; however, that prosperity could be short-lived with the looming challenge of climate change, ensuing from a broken contract between humanity and ecology. This reality and fragility are painfully apparent, especially in the Global South, where the systems, innovations, and structures formed by imperial and industrial powers, through exploitation and extraction of natural resources, skewed development away from the South’s direct benefit. The Beauty of Impermanence is a collective effort to shift this narrative and explore the built environment, embracing the under-celebrated traditions of the region to comprehend a more sustainable, more accessible, and more equitable future.

Sharjah is an incredible venue to explore these ideas. The emirate intentionally pushes the discourse of critical thinking through its many programmes supporting education, the arts, culture, and heritage initiatives that amplify current and past histories. The old city’s Souk district has been restored to itspre-1960s condition, celebrating the typology of buildings adapting to the extreme climate, while highlighting the important relationship of pedestrians to the street, in stark contrast to the automobile-designed megacities of the region. Sharjah is also in the foreground of preserving its modern historic buildings, ensuring that the landmarks and spaces of communal and daily practice are preserved to continue toinform innovative thinking and inspire unconventional ideas in the present day. The Triennial’s main sites—the Al-Qasimiyah School and Al Jubail Vegetable Market are both modern historic buildings that havebeen preserved and adapted, giving us a glimpse into an important period in the UAE’s history.

Sharjah’s socio-economic positioning has also played an important role in localising our interventions. As we ideate the importance of indigenous practices and design, in contrast to globalised technology that affords us to detach from the material language of our locality, we find ourselves questioning what it means to be local. Through knowledge exchange, the Triennial has encouraged exploring this specificity and a locality through these material, socio-economic, and geographic perspectives. Sharjah will play backdrop and actor for the exhibition, allowing participants to create a point of exchange and transpose ideas through site-specific interventions.

As this exhibition has evolved, we have categorised the practices into three overlapping strands:

1. Renewed Contextual showcases responses in the built environment that pay homage to the pre-industrialised society better in balance with the natural world. These groups of practitioners and artists rethink tradition, holistically engage with the concept of upcycling and recycling, champion the reuse of materials, and posit gentler versions of modernity. These solutions tend to manifest with strong visual markers, as the building’s materiality is dependent on its location, and its locality is equally dependent on its materiality. That is to say, context is determined by tectonics, coupled and composed through social norms and daily practice, and this coupling, in turn, produces an aesthetic language based on the context and contextuality of place.

2. Extraction Politics demonstrates responses to the often-tense relationship between our organising structures, economics and ecology. Here, participants document, record, and respond to the extractive processes that underpin design. The economics of city development, the free market that encourages the movement of goods for profit, and modern society’s consumerism - have all resulted in excessive waste production and encroached detrimentally on our natural environment.The results of these encroachments will form the basis of this group of participants' exhibits as we showcase creative solutions that are synonymous with the ideology of replenishment and renewal and highlight the importance of responsible balance.

3. Intangible Bodies celebrates the ephemeral nature of civilisation’s interaction with the natural environment. Here, participants draw from spirituality, empathy and care, decoloniality, civic status, and futurism to engage in acts of world-building and respond to the pressing concerns of our present, sometimes blurring the lines between the intangible and the material. This strand is focused on the interstitial in our urbanism; participants draw poetic narratives with substantive, actionable responses towards a suggestive and constructive utopian ideal. They navigate the architecture of ephemeralstructures that manifest through socio-political and economic constructs in our cities and draw inspiration from our compelling relationship with ground conditions and the association we place on it regarding progress and prosperity.

Architects, Designers, Artists, and Thought-leaders from around the world whose practice resonates with the conditions of the global South have a unique and emergedduality of perspective on this subject matter. Well-positioned by my curatorial Advisory board, I gained access to locations and perspectives that geographies and language would have made considerably challenging. Joined by a mix of 29 emerging and established practitioners, we have a regional makeup of 32% from sub-Saharan Africa, 12% from the Middle East, 12% across South America, with the rest equally dispersed across Europe, North America, and South East Asia. In addition, we have an equitable balance between genders.

As we tackle this topic of responsibility to create a balance between our humanity and ecology, we are also conscious of the task instilled in us to impact mindsets with this exhibition. Post-pandemic, austerity has become the norm across both regions, which is a stark reminder of how interconnected and reliant we all are on the global system. Much of our current education and practice involves designing with the illusion of surplus without the consciousness that we operate in finite conditions. Circularity and regeneration must urgently become normalised constraints in our approach to education and practice to bring about systemic change.

As Architects, we are well-positioned to champion an alternate trajectory with solutions for human and ecologically-centred narratives for the future. For example, exhibitions are natural propagators of waste production by the nature of their itinerant construct. We have aimed as much as possible to mitigate this. Although not carbon neutral, we have encouraged participants to consider and execute their showcases with a no-waste mindset. We have done this by local sourcing, utilising virgin materials with a clear, actionable plan for a second life after the exhibition, and using materials initially considered waste.

Our exhibition design is focused on the repurposing of building materials. By forming relationships with Sharjah’s industrial area, we have been able to lease materials for use in the exhibition that will be returned afterwards. This shift in mindset has also been utilised in the SAT 02’s merchandise. Our tote bags and buckets hats, designed in Sharjah, are made exclusively from recycled denim jeans responsibly sourced in Uganda. When the Foundation commissioned this progressively climate-responsible initiatives, none of us could have imagined the fascinating and frustrating process that would ensue in the acquiring and processing of resources in this manner. The complexity of what conceptually appears to be quite simple is far from a homogeneous process and requires a sophisticated series of actions to execute. What this did bring to the foreground is that intentionality alone is not enough and that the scaling of such initiatives in themselves must be understood to execute.

The second Sharjah Architecture Triennial is intended as a refreshingly focused architecture and design exhibition, showcasing solutions that have been with us for generations, as well as solutions that are an immediate and measured response to our current constraints with the essential nuanced hybridity urgently required in our urbanised world. ‘Field Notes on Scarcity’ is a conceptual publication as part of the exhibition. This publication was conceived as a snapshot of the field response to this Triennial theme through the prompt What has been an impactful and effective response to Scarcity? The result is anoverview of 59 voices engaging with these ideas in myriad ways across their larger practices.

What lessons can be learnt from these autonomous self-organising systems that work within the limitations of the natural resources available? Can these systems be scaled to address our densification and curb carbonisation, in effect, planetary scarcity? We must look at how the regions of the global south have dealt with the limitation of resources as a suggestion to combat our planet's natural capacity to neutralise pollution, which is becoming dangerously unattainable. What is wrong with our current value system? Why does our acknowledgement of progress negate the passive and natural occurring - for example, our preference for clinically hard surfaces as opposed to the natural ground or our obsession with air conditioning and plastic? When these notions of progress are scaled, they significantly harm our natural environment.

The cornucopian model is now unattainable; the Industrial Revolution and subsequent Great Acceleration have propelled us all into an unnatural run on our natural resources and direct conflict with ecology balance. It is essential to press that we must move beyond the acknowledgement of a wrong or an apology for the past from the north to the south, but a collective and constructive resolve for systemic change for the future. This exhibition does not aim to dictate solutions but serves as a convergence to re-think optimistically our approach in the hope that history will judge us kindly.

[1] The Bible, Genesis 1 vs 26-31 - And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, andreplenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and overevery living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Sharjah Architecture Triennial - The Beauty of the Impermanence

Curator: Tosin Oshinowo

Architects: Al Borde 

Al Borde Colaborators: María Fernanda Heredia & Melissa Naranjo

Engineering Advisor: Patricio Cevallos

Location: Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Area: 340.00 m2

Design: 2023

Construction: 2023

Production: SAT Team

Wood Poles: SEWA (Sharjah Electricity, Water and Gas Authority)

Renders: Pinxcel

Photos: Danko Stjepanovic - Courtesy of Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Shahbaz Ahmed, and Al Borde

BETWEEN THE AVAILABLE AND THE BIODEGRADABLE

In a context where everything is within reach, where anything is possible to acquire from anywhere, and the capitalist development approach has eroded the local identity to the extent of destroying historic neighborhoods, a fundamental question arises: What does it mean to be local?

The Al Qasimiyah school has relinquished its role as a primary school and transformed into one of the venues for the SAT (Sharjah Architecture Triennial). In this shift of purpose, the school evolves from a confined space within a perimeter wall, with a mission to care for children, to aspiring to become an open space that connects with its surroundings and the city. This newfound openness generates fresh ways of occupying the area. The new pedestrian accesses from the North and West converge onto a platform, providing an opportunity to highlight this meeting point and establish a welcoming threshold.

This threshold is defined by a shadow that creates the conditions for inhabiting the exterior. It requires a structure that is possible to build with any available material. However, in a context; where "everything" is "available," this concept becomes blurry. Considering the economy of effort draws a path to pursue maximum efficiency in transforming raw materials into architectural elements, thus minimizing the energy used in production, processing, and transportation of materials.

The Sharjah Electricity, Water, and Gas Authority (SEWA) has initiated a process of replacing wooden poles with metal ones, which has resulted in a hundred preserved wooden poles stored in their depot. The best ones are selected, damaged ends cut off, and a package of logs of various sizes is obtained, tall enough to assemble a structure from which the shadow suspends.

The shade is created using palm tree mats, a material available in the area. It used in various applications, from the floors of houses to the ceilings of the souks, and even in enclosures. These mats can be easily acquired in any bazaar, offering a variety of types, sizes, shapes, and textures.

This design approach results in a raw and tactile work; crafted with natural materials that allow us to establish an intimate and direct discourse with the place, grounding it on site. The threshold will serve to welcome visitors and, simultaneously, become a way to experience and test the use of this new space, drawing the attention of those who reside and work nearby; inviting them to cross its boundaries.

The project will endure as long as the space requires, providing the flexibility to be assembled and disassembled in other locations. When the time comes to conclude its use, the poles can return to the depot, awaiting a new purpose, while the mats' versatility may easily find another use. There will come a day when these materials naturally degrade, and the cycle of life will close harmoniously with nature.