18.02.2023
Living Continuity Sessions 5 and 6
Panel 1 (Living Continuity Session V): The Urgency of People-Centered Planning and Praxis-based Alternatives
For this session, we look critically inwards and explore work that challenges the current frontiers of architecture and urbanism. How can praxis enable critical engagement, and what does it reveal around current issues of access, exclusion, precarity and participation in neighborhood planning?
Panelists: Arshiya Syed, Jason Carlow, Najia Fatima, Paulina Yeal Cho
Convener: Sharmeen Inayat
Discussant: Beatriz Itzel Cruz Megchun
Panel 2 (Living Continuity Session VI): Participatory Research and Lessons in Community Interdependence
In this session, we will explore the importance of amplifying and enabling community voices. What are the challenges, incremental and transformative actions necessary to challenge current systems that exclude and marginalize the global majority? How can modes of research support modes of resistance?
Panelists: Maitha Alhammadi, Marcos Parga, Ailo Ribas
Convener: Sharmeen Inayat
Discussant: Beatriz Itzel Cruz Megchun
We are committed to fostering community building through ongoing collaborative engagement and critical discourse. Registration for individuals who are interested to attend and participate is open. View programme details here.
02.02.2023
Spring 2023 Programme Announcement
Living Continuity is a collective inquiry into the challenges and potential of working towards spatially just neighborhoods. In current urban policy debates, the neighborhood has emerged as an important scalar construct to understand the systems and processes that shape communities and ecosystems. This calls for re-examining the denotations and connotative dimensions of the terms ‘neighborhood’, and ‘community’ beyond the romanticized and the normative. In the global context of pervasive neoliberal urbanism, cities that are planned and grow on principles of zoning warrant accelerated segregation, expulsion and homogenization. Urban expansion and renewal thus yields disproportionate access to and distribution of environmental wellness, urban commons, social health and mobility. The tension between renewal vs expansion which occurs at this scalar level also raises questions on how to secure lived continuity, intersectional diversity, and social cohesion. How can interlocutors, respondents and residents facilitate and advocate for inclusive, decolonial and sensitized discourses around urban policy and education given socio-political limitations and challenges?
This line of inquiry will continue to be explored through a research exhibition featuring roundtables, knowledge exchange and supplementary tools from February 18th - April 30th 2023 at the Al Jubail Vegetable Market in Sharjah and online on the SAT Research Initiative webpage. We will reflect on how to broaden our understanding of praxis-based alternatives as well as how to amplify people-centered approaches through insights on interdependence, plurality and spatial practice. Stay posted for announcements and details on how you can participate.
Living Continuity is the inaugural discursive series organized by the SAT Research Initiative, one of the core programmes of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial. The project is curated by Sharmeen Inayat, Research Curator of SAT Research Initiative and features contributions from Ailo Ribas, Alfonse Chiu, Arshiya Syed, Beatriz Itzel Cruz Megchun, Bhoomika Ghaghada, Haitham Issam, Jason Carlow, Khaled Al Awadi, Khaled Galal Ahmed, Maitha Al Jassim, Marcos Parga, Mona El Mousfy, Najia Fatima, Paulina Yeal Cho, Yasser Elsheshtawy, Tariq Miah, Martin Abbott + Jennifer Minner, Frederik Weissenborn + Aude Azzi, Juan Roldan, Bhakti More, George Katodrytis, Muhammad Aziz, Abu Dhabi Public Spaces Project, Jumanah Abbas, Leon Duval, and Ashraf Salama + Florian Weidman.
12.08.2022
Register to attend Living Continuity Seminar Session 4 (Online) to be held on August 24th, 2022
Test SAT Research seminars resume with Session IV which will convene online on August 24th, 2022. Living Continuity is a collective inquiry on the challenges and opportunities of working towards spatially just neighbourhoods. Session IV aims to explore the temporal dimension of housing through indicators of social cohesion and socio-spatial attributes that resist transience. Dr Yasser Elsheshtawy expands on a case study analysis of folk houses in the UAE, how they became a testament of inhabitants asserting their presence and rootedness in the midst of a constantly changing cityscape and the lessons they provide. Dr Bhakti More shares her study comparing four residential neighbourhoods in Dubai to understand the concept of residential stability, social cohesiveness and the influence of shared spaces amongst expatriate residents in neighbourhoods in Dubai.
Committed to fostering community building through ongoing collaborative engagement and critical discourse, registration for individuals who are interested in attending and participating in the discussion with the invited speakers is open. To RSVP, please send expressions of interest to info@sharjaharchitecture.org. The session will be held online on August 24 at 6:00 PM GST. Confirmations of your registration along with the webinar link will be sent by email on August 21.
View full programme.
02.06.2022
Call for Proposals (Essay Abstracts)
This call for proposals invites contributions to the first instalment of SAT Research. Authors of accepted essays will be commissioned to develop their work for publication. The publication will feature the work of invited contributors as well as authors selected through this open call process. Select commissions may be invited to present their work at a symposium to take place in December 2022 in Sharjah.
While the emergence of local and regional urban centres evolved from an economy of constraints and subsistence, the pervasiveness of contemporary practices of excess that have largely evolved in the global north has gradually resulted in the rupture of the socio-urban fabric and a disconnect with local conditions. There is an urgent need for a radical shift toward urbanism that is responsive to social needs and ecological limits as a matter of survival.
Living Continuity is an invitation to begin a collective inquiry on the challenges and potentialities of working towards a socially and ecologically just urban future beginning at the scale of the neighbourhood. Subject matter that will be explored includes but is not limited to:
1. Social and ecological issues as a result of the development of homogenised neighbourhoods and accelerated land use.
2. Proximity and access to neighbourhood amenities and green spaces.
3. Spatial practices that shaped traditional neighbourhoods. In port cities such as Sharjah, this included responsive and adaptive typologies, urban diversity and compactness.
4. The impact of neoliberal and colonial forces on local conditions through shifting value systems and expeditious expansion.
5. Social rituals reimagined as alternatives to current dominant models.
6. Readings across time, sectors and communities to better understand the issues around and solutions to spatial distribution and access.
7. Social conduits and urban voids as tools of collective efficacy and interdependency.
Format and Focus
Proposals must include a 250-300 words abstract and author biography.
Proposals for the following essay formats are invited to submit:
1. Expository Essay of 2500 to 5000 words. Expository essays are reserved for research-based work focused on Sharjah and the United Arab Emirates or work that draws strong comparisons and parallels to local conditions.
2. Argumentative or Position Essay of 1500 to 3000 words. Position essays are not limited to geographic scope and are open to writing across research, practice and education that provokes new perspectives and offer a critical lens for the subject matter.
3. Visual Essay or Data Story of 5 to 20 visuals: Visual essays are not limited to geographic scope and are welcome to illuminate knowledge and findings that support key ideas in an artistic capacity or through data journalism.
Key Dates [UPDATED]
July 15, 2022: Deadline to submit abstracts and proposals
August 09, 2022: Notifications sent to authors of selected proposals
November 05, 2022: Deadline to submit the full-length drafts
November 30, 2022: Editorial review sent to authors
December 21, 2022: Deadline to submit final essays
Submission
Authors will be asked to grant copyright for publication, symposium proceedings, exhibition purposes, and online and print dissemination. The Sharjah Architectural Triennial is a not-for-profit organisation.
Authors must be able to furnish requested permissions for any third-party materials included in their paper.
This is a multi-disciplinary initiative that strives to be inclusive. Contributions from fields beyond the realm of architecture and urbanism including the social sciences and the arts are strongly encouraged. New perspectives on methodologies, marginalised voices outside the realm of academic research and local knowledges from the Global South are also strongly encouraged.
All submission documents must be sent as a Microsoft Word file via email to the editor at sharmeen@sharjaharchitecture.org.
12.03.2022 Register to attend SAT Research Launch – Living Continuity, Seminar Sessions 1, 2 and 3
SAT Research's first seminar will be held on March 19th, 2022. Titled, Living Continuity: a collective inquiry, This installment focuses on local challenges to preserving robust, sustainable and inclusive neighbourhoods. Questions we will be asking include: How can we reimagine rapidly eroding regional sensitivities and knowledge systems? How can architecture and urbanism practitioners, educators and stakeholders begin to tackle precipitous global urbanization while operating in a vast field of economic, political and social demands? Committed to growing a repository of local knowledge production and fostering community-building through ongoing collaborative engagement, we invite individuals who are interested in participating to join our invited speakers and discussants for the full-day event. Please send expressions of interest by March 15. Seats are limited and confirmations of your registration will be sent by email on March 17.
Session I, alternatives to urban expansion, will open the discussion with Mona El-Mousfy’s insights stemming from her research-based practice and the application of adaptive reuse methods in Sharjah City, and Khaled Galal Ahmed, who offers alternative solutions to social housing in the UAE to challenge the prevalence of Western housing models. Session II, urban networks as critical space, features Khaled Alawadi’s morphological mappings of alleyways in Abu Dhabi and Dubai revealing the potential impact of these micro-networks and Beatriz Itzel Cruz Megchun’s framework for design for social interdependence. Session III, forms of community expulsion and exclusion, will conclude the day’s sessions with Bhoomika Ghaghada’s analysis of the cultural expulsion in the Karama neighbourhood of Dubai that questions what is lost when something is redeveloped and Juan-Roldan Martin’s observations of urban appropriation and rituals established by inhabitants that defy constructs of imported Western park models in the UAE.
The event will take place at the disused Al Jubail Vegetable Market in Sharjah in a segment of the semi-open, naturally ventilated building. The site, previously slated for demolition after the market was relocated, is currently being programmed by the Sharjah Architecture Triennial and the Sharjah Art Foundation for temporary events and exhibitions. It is planned to be the future home of SAT Research among other institutional activities and public programmes.
View full programme.
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