Building Sharjah

Alia Al Sabi pores over back issues of Sharjah-based magazine Al Azmenah Al Arabiya to gather a sense of the concerns and questions voiced by local residents in the face of unrelenting change to the social and physical landscape around them.

The text of my chapter “Schools for the Arab Homeland: Kuwait’s Educational Mission in Sharjah” in @BuildingSharjah. It highlights the Pan-Arabist & anti-colonial dimensions of Kuwaiti educational assistance to the Trucial States (future UAE), 1950s-1970s academia.edu/70222305/Schoo…

Further, we've kept this feed about works by those whose contributions to @BuildingSharjah make for a multi-faceted window into a fascinating city. twitter.com/BuildingSharja…

As it is a reigning topic in the region, the dialogue also considered questions around preservation of modern architecture. We're happy to include 2 pieces by architect and adviser to @sharjaharch Mona El Mousfy, whose work has influenced regional discussions.

In new interview👇with @KepelGilles @AlMonitor, @SultanAlQassemi lays out some compact, wide-ranging context of our recent book @BuidingSharjah published by @Birkhauser. This thread includes themes of the book mentioned in conversation al-monitor.com/podcasts/sulta…

At a campus for Volvo and Caterpillar, architect and researcher @roberto__fabbri finds a connection between Kuwaiti entrepreneurialism and Sharjah’s hopes to incubate industrial enterprises.

Curator Hammad Nasar maps out the emotional, cultural, and geopolitical relevance a cricket stadium bestowed on Sharjah in the 1980s.

Here is a thread of writers & topics featured in our new book @BuildingSharjah just published by @Birkhauser. We are proud to present our 19 contributors, including those who know this city well & others whose perspective contributes to understanding Sharjah in a global context.

Longtime Sharjah resident @KVShamsudheen recalls the early, international community of one of Sharjah’s first large-scale residential development projects, 1000 Villas.

The Egyptian firm that designed Cairo’s memorable Maspero building, Momen Architects, also assembled a family of municipal buildings for Sharjah—as architectural historian Mohamed Elshahed @elshahedmo highlights.

Architectural historian Michael Kubo @microkubo traces the global links that helped materialize Sharjah’s most recognizable hotel, the Inter-Continental, then known as Radisson Blu, now closed.

Artist Ammar Al Attar @ammarmak interviews studio photographer Prem Ratnam about how his lifework is also a recording of Sharjah’s changing landscapes.