Designs that Thrive in Scarcity at Sharjah Architecture Triennial

Sharjah Architecture Triennial is a platform that has launched its initiatives to participate in the global discourse of architecture with reflections that extend to local and regional levels. This year the Triennial is curated by Lagos-based architect Tosin Oshinowo and under the theme, The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability spotlights creative, innovative, and resourceful design solutions borne from conditions of scarcity across the global south, exemplified in the work of 29 participants.

Sharjah Architecture Triennial focuses on the specificity of the Gulf’s relationship with the region in cultural, economic, and social aspects and this year it focuses on reflections by architects and designers who have navigated contextual constraints to turn scarcity into opportunity.

SCALE speaks to the curator Oshinowo to understand more about the theme and the progamme of the Triennial. We ask her how the focus can be turned towards adaptability when there is abundance of resources. She says that much of what she is comes from growing in a country like Lagos where resources are scarce and yet the lessons learnt were plenty and that even if there is a level of disparity in these cities there is an optimism which is a cause of celebration.

“Platforms like the Sharjah Architecture Triennial give a voice, an accessibility, and an enabling environment to ensure that we have these discussions on topics that are normally never addressed. We also share the responsibility of showing the global south of the values that exists around as we also let the global north know of the alternatives that thrive in the global south.”

She says, “Sharjah is in the foreground of preserving its modern historic buildings, ensuring that the landmarks and spaces of communal and daily practice are preserved to continue to inform innovative thinking and inspire unconventional ideas in the present day. The theme for the Triennial looks at the under-celebrated design and building innovations from the global south that tend to occur due to conditions of scarcity but tend to be better in balance with the environment.’‘

 SCALE: Tell us more about the theme The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability that you have envisioned.

Tosin Oshinowo: The theme for the Triennial looks at the under-celebrated design and building innovations from the global south that tend to occur due to conditions of scarcity but tend to be better in balance with the environment.  The answer to how to build a sustainable future in our precarious present has its roots in traditions of architecture and design that have been with us for generations and continue to evolve.

Across the Global South, many practitioners, craftspeople, and communities have embraced long-standing traditions that the cannon have systematically ignored. These approaches prioritise an understanding of impermanence, inventive responsiveness to limitations, and a psychology of the collective that is essential for our shared future.

SCALE: How will the theme fit in an environment where even though building materials are not abundant, monetary resources make up for the lack of natural resources?

Tosin Oshinowo: Materiality is relative; it is about how and what you see as building materials. One of the exhibition highlights is the value of traditional buildings, which have been executed contextually, using materials in the immediacy of the location. If building materials such as concrete are not abundant due to lack of funds, the question should be, what materials are available in that context to construct from?

Even in the region, we have examples of local materiality and know-how for this exhibition.  Sumaya Dabbagh’s exhibit ‘Earth to Earth’ is an excellent example. Working with the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, mudbricks local to the region that have been developed for restoration projects have been used for the exhibition to create a contemplation pavilion.

There are also opportunities to develop contemporary building technology using local materials.

Hive Earth is a practice from Ghana, which has a lot of experience producing rammed earth walls in West Africa.  Through material testing, they came up with a viable solution to apply the rammed earth technology in the region by replacing laterite soil with rock aggregate.

The point to be made is there are always materials to build from contextually all over the world.  In our modernised world, with the need for speed and scale, do these materials work for the reality of today’s requirements? We must review and reflect on how we live to be more ecologically balanced with our environment.

SCALE: How important is it for architects to educate everyone about building sustainably?

Tosin Oshinowo: Everyone must take an active role towards our environment through responsible consumption, as this is a collective challenge.

For architects, the construction industry globally contributes 21% of greenhouse gas emissions.  At the recently completed COP28, the UN environment programme launched a new initiative which sees a global push for near-zero emissions and resilient buildings for 2030. We have an added responsibility to urgently think and practice differently.

What SAT02 has shown are architects, designers, artists and thought leaders who are ahead of the curve in a collaborative effort to explore a future that embraces the under-celebrated traditions of the region to comprehend a more sustainable, more accessible, and more equitable view of tomorrow.

SCALE: How have you curated the Triennial? What are the programmes and how have you arranged them for the Triennial?

Tosin Oshinowo: The triennial has been curated along three strands. We have ‘renewed contextual’, ‘extraction politics’ and ‘Intangible bodies’. Renewed contextual showcases exhibits that re-think tradition, holistically engage with the concept of upcycling and recycling, champion the reuse of materials, and posit gentler versions of modernity. In many cases, these works create visual markers due to the contextual nature of their existence and relevance to place.

Meanwhile, ‘extraction politics’ showcases works that respond to the often tense relationship between our organising structures, economics, and ecology and question the cost of global prosperity. Modernity has improved global standards of living; however, it has been built off unbalanced extractions. This has fostered a culture of incessant consumption and waste production. Established trade routes move waste from the global North to regions of the global South — especially the African subcontinent.

And finally, we have ‘Intangible Bodies’, which celebrate civilisation’s interaction with the natural environment. Participants drew inspiration 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 showcased the ephemeral nature of indigenous practice, not relating to materiality but more so to the existing systems that acknowledged the need for balance.

SCALE: How inclusive is the Triennial? How do you ensure that voices from around the world are heard at this time?

Tosin Oshinowo: Geography and cultural perspectives influenced the selection of participants, but most important was their deep engagement with practice that responds to my theme. Their duality of perspective affords them visibility on the subject matter, allowing them to champion innovation as a fundamental requirement for survival. We have 29 Participants/groups with a mix of emerging and established practitioners who make up this coverage.

We have a regional makeup of 32% African subcontinent, 12% from the Middle East, and 12% across South America, with the rest equally dispersed across Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia.   In addition, we have an equitable balance across the genders.

SCALE:How has your work and practice informed your role as a curator of the Triennial?

Tosin Oshinowo: My experiences living and practising architecture in Lagos, Nigeria, informed the theme for this exhibition, as well as my earlier experiences curating. I co-curated the Lagos Biennial in 2019. Titled, ‘How To Build a Lagoon with Just a Bottle of Wine?’

The exhibition took the city of Lagos as its epicentre and point of departure for a broader investigation of how contemporary artists, designers, and other creatives are responding to the challenges of today.  The Sharjah Architecture triennial, ‘The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of  Adaptability’, is informed by similar experiences but is more focused on the experiences of architecture formed from living and practising due to conditions of scarcity.

SCALE: Which of the projects have used the theme to share a brilliant design in tune with the theme? Your list of must-experience at the Triennial?

Tosin Oshinowo: I am pleased with the diversity of responses to the curatorial statement by the participants and encouraged by this heterogeneity. All the exhibits deeply moved me, but I would like to highlight three in answer to this question.

Natural Fantura’s Productive Floating House reinterpreted the standard exhibition model and used their allocated exhibition funds to create and document a build project for a family on the Babahoyo River in Ecuador. These architects design for the family’s unique spatial requirements by participating and analysing their living spaces.

They produced a film shown in the exhibition, which charts the resilience of self-organisational, participatory design, recovering contextual artisanal techniques, and seeks to initiate the implementation of public policy that allows for the regenerative inhabitation of Babahoyo’s riverbanks. This project sets an example towards the general Triennial/Biennial exhibit format.

Wallmakers’ 3-minute corridor has been a firm favourite during the opening weekend. I invited Wallmakers to participate in the exhibition because I admire their journey as pioneers who create aesthetically striking and intriguing engineering designs using earth as the main building material. Staying true to their practice, Wallmakers were interested in creating a pavilion from available materials in the region. They utilised used-tyres for the vertical plain, drawing attention to our global mass consumption. In the horizontal plane, they worked with sand, an abundant material in the region but not generally deemed unsuitable for building in its elemental form.  The result is an incredible labyrinth structure that is intriguing and engaging. The composition is an inviting structure that unexpectedly acoustically insulates the interior. The point of this exhibit is to challenge our existing preconceptions on building materials; after all, it is only through experimentation that we can discover new possibilities.

Sandra Poulson is an artist I am familiar with. She was one of the participants in the Lagos Biennial I co-curated in 2019. As such, I was initially sceptical about including her to avoid nepotism; however, she sent me such an intriguing proposal in response to the theme, which is an excellent fit.  ‘Dust, as an Accidental Gift’, is the gift that keeps giving.

lt looks forensically at the ever-present dust in Luanda, as in many global-south cities, it reflects on the city’s socio-economic, political, cultural, and built landscape. She takes us on a journey using the mono-materiality of cardboard mache to highlight the ubiquitous dust, which has become a stable commodity through the many economic activities focused on erasing its traces. This narrative reminds us of the scars and de-associations of progress due to our association with the clean, hard-cemented surfaces of a colonial past.

Must-sees include Limbo Accra’s ‘Super Limbo’ exhibit at the Sharjah Mall and ‘We Rest at the Bird’s Nest’ at Industrial Area 5 by Papa Omotayo and Eve Nnaji.

I encourage everyone to ‘Play You are in Sharjah’ by 51-1 Arquitectos at the Old Al Jubail Vegetable Market. While there, just across the street, tour the Anthropocene Museum 9.0 by Cave Bureau.

SCALE: How different or similar is the Middle East in terms of architectural practices and ideologies? Tell us about your perspective of working in the Middle East?

Tosin Oshinowo: The Middle East and Africa both have experiences of imperialist powers and a trajectory of modernity from humble beginnings. The big difference is the availability of resources and the scale of the building.

Curating the Sharjah Architecture Triennial has been my first experience working within the region. From my observation over the many months I have visited the region, I have been drawn particularly to Sharjah’s intentional pushes for the discourse of critical thinking through 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 its pre-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 car-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 to inform innovative thinking and inspire unconventional ideas in the present day.

Culturally, I have felt at home and enjoyed engaging with the many people I have met and worked with to deliver this exhibition. I look forward to more interactions in the region.