Dezeen LIVE: Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023
The Dezeen team are reporting live from the preview day of the second edition of Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023 in the United Arab Emirates (opening 11 November). Follow for updates throughout the day, with exclusive previews of installations and exhibitions.
10:00am The triennial's original merch – the ubiquitous tote bag, and bucket hats – was made from 1,700 pairs of jeans. The jeans were sourced from bales of clothes sent to the country from western countries.
They were recycled and redesigned by Ugandan designer Bobby Kolade, who is the creative director of Buzigahill.
I haven't actually managed to get my hands on my own bucket hat – but am desperately hunting one as a gift for our bucket-hat-wearing Dezeen digital editor! – Tom Ravenscroft
9:30am All of the exhibition design has been created by Italian studio Space Caviar, which has used stacks of building materials to build seating and exhibition stands, writes Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft from Sharjah.
Following the triennial these will be dismantled and sold back into the construction supply system.
"When we first got to Sharjah we were really struck by how, in the areas surrounding building sites, there are these areas called industrial areas and within them, they have these towers of materials – there is a market for reusing them," Sofia Pia Belenky of Space Caviar told Dezeen.
"So we were really interested in this market and the way in which workers would hang out around these stacks of materials and use them almost as ready-made furniture," she continued.
"We wanted to bring that same energy and that same idea to the school here – and we basically developed relationships with contractors to borrow the materials which they will use afterwards, for future projects."
9:00am Curator of this second edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo, has opened the triennial – titled The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability – by explaining the core idea of the festival and its focus on designs born of scarcity from the Global South.
Lagos-based Oshinowo is principal of the architecture studio CM Design Atelier and has become known for socially responsive architecture projects across Nigeria.
She was co-curator of the Lagos Biennial in 2019 and was a Dezeen Awards 2022 judge.
Read more about Tosin Oshinowo's appointment as curator for Sharjah Archiecture Triennial 2023 ›
8:00am Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft is attending the official preview of Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023 today, 10 November, in the United Arab Emirates.
The festival features installations and exhibits from Cave Bureau, Wallmakers, Asif Khan, 51-1 Arquitectos, Formafantasma and Space Caviar among others.
The two main venues for the festival are a former school that was built in the mid 1970s and a former fruit market that was built in the early 1980s.
Both buildings are examples of the architecture that was created in the emirate in the years after gaining its independence in 1971. In anticipation of the inaugural triennial in 2019, they were purchased by the organising foundation as part of a campaign to conserve the emirate's 1970s and 80s architecture, which is increasingly under threat of demolition.
"The foundation wants to keep all the layers in the city – including the 1970s and 80s," said Mona El Mousfy at the time, who is the architecture consultant for the triennial and partner organisation the Sharjah Art Foundation, which has also been purchasing buildings from the era.
Since then, Peruvian studio 51-1 Arquitectos has converted a 1970s ice storage facility into a cultural venue, restaurant and hotel for the Sharjah Art Foundation.
See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest information you need to know to attend the event, as well as a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.
All times are London time, from where digital editor Rupert Bickersteth is running this live feed at Dezeen HQ.
The lead image is by Tom Ravenscroft.
The post Dezeen LIVE: Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023 appeared first on Dezeen.