Interior view of
Radisson Blu
Resort, Sharjah.
Image by Ieva
SaudargaitOpposite:
Al-Qasimiyah
School, SharjahOpposite: Adrian
Lahoud, curator
of Sharjah Archi-
tecture TriennialAl-Qasimiyah
SchoolAl-Qasimiyah
Schoolto be presented as part of the triennial, which Lahoud hopes
will prove to be a significant moment in the ongoing global
discourse around climate change.
“I believe that architecture as a practice holds a key role in
addressing climate change,” Lahoud said. “However, in order
to leverage this potential, we must move away from the ex-
tractive and exploitative models that dominate architectural
practice. We are at a point of ecological collapse and one fact
must not be ignored: that the sites, regions and populations
most immediately and irreversibly threatened by climate
change are the same ones that face regimes of global socio-
economic extraction and exploitation.
“Valuable insight can therefore be drawn from paying at-
tention to existing social struggles at the frontline of climate
change, including indigenous ones. There is a particular prob-
lem with the western ontological distinction between humans
and the environment. This distinction views architecture as
‘shelter’ from the environment, thereby validating land grab
and resource extraction. Human history offers a myriad of ex-
amples of alternative social orders, of relationships between
humans and other beings that evolved according to various
beliefs and practices, and through these examples we might
COVER STORY / 29