Using Sharjah as its primary field of research, the inaugural edition of Sharjah Architecture Triennial invites members of an emerging generation of architects, urban designers, planners, scholars and artists from across North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and their diaspora to respond to the unique challenges and opportunities faced by our generation.

Through the theme of Rights of Future Generations, curator Adrian Lahoud seeks to question how inheritance, legacy, and the state of the environment are passed from one generation to the next, how present decisions have long-term intergenerational consequences and how other expressions of co-existence might challenge dominant perspectives.

Turning to alternative concepts of architecture and the environment, the theme asks us to focus on moments where experimentation with architectural and institutional forms collaborate to generate new social realities.

In advance of the inaugural edition which opened in November 2019, research was conducted in three areas: housing, schooling and environment.

Housing is the most intimate sphere of our lives. Given that it is where society reproduces its most cherished values, it is the most powerful and controversial of spaces and therefore most resistant to change.

The event served as a forum to discuss the theme through the lens of Housing and Domesticity.

Curator Adrian Lahoud invited four interlocutors:

Samaneh Moafi (Project Coordinator, Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London)

Asseel Al-Ragam (Associate Professor and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, Research and Graduate Studies, College of Architecture at Kuwait University)

Abir Saksouk (Co-Founder, Public Works Studio Beirut)

Ola Hassanain (Artist and 2018 Fellow at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht).