Architecture Otherwise: Building Civic Infrastructure for Collective Futures

The Sharjah Architecture Triennial opens its third edition, Architecture Otherwise: Building Civic Infrastructure for Collective Futures, in Sharjah from 14 November 2026 to 14 April 2027. Vyjayanthi Rao curates it with associate curator Tau Tavengwa. The participants come from architecture, art, anthropology, urbanism, design, education and community work. Their projects take the form of installations, films, archives and performances, alongside workshops and lectures, spread across the city and the wider emirate.

Several projects deal with movement and displacement. Hiba Bou Akar, Mohamad Hafeda and Nathalie Harb present mobile, shelter-like installations on displacement in Lebanon, using material from refugee settlements and wartime infrastructure. Aslıhan Demirtaş, Ali Cindoruk and Dilşad Aladağ bring a new version of Tumblespace, a movable structure that draws on nomadic ways of living. Sa'dia Rehman shows her 2022 film There Isn't a Stone I Don't Remember, about her family's displacement by the Tarbela Dam in Pakistan. Kush Badhwar's film project follows the people and land affected by the Navi Mumbai International Airport development.

A further group of projects looks at land, sky, ritual and heritage. Azza Aboualam develops her 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale research into Assemblies, a speculative greenhouse system for growing food in arid conditions. Badriyah Alsalem works with celestial navigation and older methods of reading the sky above the desert. Ziad Jamaleddine, Makram el Kadi, Iheb Guermazi and Beya Othmani bring the khalwa, a Sufi space of retreat, to Sharjah. Samar Halloum's Sabeel, Negotiated reads the everyday ways people adapt Sharjah's transitional spaces as forms of sabeel, the offering of basic needs to passers-by. Megawra Built Environment Collective and RIWAQ bring practitioners from Egypt and Palestine together on heritage in historic cities.

Other projects turn to food, sound and the city at night. Torolab compiles a Sharjah Cookbook that maps territory through food and labour. Chloë Bass and Bill Dietz turn public address systems into sound installations for many voices. Mohamad Nahleh and Ozayr Saloojee explore the idea of a "night architecture" through storytelling, performance and guided walks. Some participants develop their work through longer residencies in Sharjah. Rao frames the edition around architecture as a shared condition lived every day, rather than a single object or event.