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

Turning to alternative concepts of architecture and the environment, Rights of Future Generations asks us to focus on moments where experimentation with architectural and institutional forms collaborate to generate new social realities. In advance of the opening which took place in November 2019, research was conducted in three areas: housing, education, and environment.

The December 2018 forum addressed housing as a powerful and controversial space where society reproduces its most cherished values and the second forum will examine the theme through the lens of schooling and education. In both its formal settings (school and university buildings) and informal settings (alternative learning environments), the educational space embodies a collective aspiration to produce certain kinds of subjects. In a neo-colonial and post-colonial context, rights to education and conflicts over the form of education emerge as fundamental arenas of social struggle over the shape of a society to come.

Rights of Future Generations curator Adrian Lahoud invited four speakers:
Yasmina El Chami (Architect; PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge)
Sonia Vaz Borges (Research Associate at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at The Graduate Center, City University of New York)
Angalika Sagar (Artist, Co-Founder, The Otolith Group)
Kodwo Eshun (Artist, Co-Founder, The Otolith Group)