Within the first few minutes of speaking with London-based architects Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari, one can identify the importance of centring native voices in high conflict regions. Augmenting this sentiment, in tandem with their architectural exhibition The Power of the ‘Invisibles’ (currently on view at the Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023), Sharif further asserted, "We are not obsessed, as architects, with creating a monumental object. If anything, it is that power of impermanence, with the fact that things may be ephemeral, they may appear and disappear, may be appropriated by the local community, may change dress, become a form of resilience, or even a new aesthetic or entity. We don’t shy away from that. We don’t feel the ego. Our role is only that of a facilitator for the community.”

It is, perhaps, the common negation of the extant condition of a region (as well as the vernacular practices that have persisted in such places) in favour of the tabula rasa fantasy credited to modernism, that makes it difficult for architectural practitioners to empathise with the relentless ruination of human conditions and infrastructural entities not deemed ‘monumental.’ The onslaught of capitalism and consumerism, and the practice of “solving every issue with cornucopianism,” as asserted by Nigerian architect, designer, and curator of the triennial, Tosin Oshinowo, further exacerbates this apathy. It is exactly these Eurocentric and modernist definitions of the ‘developed,’ the ‘civilised’ and the ‘modern’ that the triennial in Sharjah aims to subvert with novel perspectives emerging from the Global South.

Nature, culture, and everyday practices are inseparable. How then can environmental consciousness, morality, and social equality be separated? – Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari

Sharif, pondering upon the role of such an architectural exhibition in our contemporary socio-political climate, shared, “It is sad that within the Global North, there is a different direction, with a different aesthetic that is more consumer-driven, that is more obsessed with the monumental, with the power of the monument, the highest, the tallest, the widest, the biggest, you name it. But what was beautiful about the triennial is that it was all about small-scale interventions that are all in dialogue with nature.” Adding to this, Golzari said, “This triennial gives us new aesthetics. Also, by bringing together practitioners from the Global South, it honours alternative practices, and, in some way, legitimises the indirect resistance that such creatives are showcasing against colonial practices by reappropriating vernacular techniques and involving local communities. They stand in contrast to consumption, waste, and the exploitation of land and resources under the guise of capitalism.”

Sharif and Golzari, along with Murray Fraser, are the founders of Palestine Regeneration Team (PART), an initiative set up "to act as a platform for key academics and practitioners, architects and planners who want to open up the dialogue about Palestine and make a contribution either through their intellectual input or practical engagement with specific design and regeneration projects." The practice delves into both, practical projects as well as speculative proposals. Dedicated to the job of imparting hope in the region, and, most importantly, learning from the locals, PART works on the ground (with the locals) by scouring and reappropriating any and every material available. The process of testing and prototyping, then, helps the practitioners establish a legitimate process, which is then utilised in other scarcity-ridden locales across the globe.

Against the context of the ongoing violence in the region, Sharif and Golzari revised their exhibition note before its opening on November 11, 2023, to make it more specific to Gaza. This not only helped the architects establish a clear stance on an international forum, but also ushered attention from co-participants and visitors, and opened up a space for learning, reflection and solidarity. The introduction to their exhibition note references late Palestinian poet and author Mahmoud Darwish’s (still) pertinent words, “We are alive and persistent, and the dream continues.”

Remitting attention to the exhibition in Sharjah, UAE, the architects share, “Inspired by our work in Gaza, this exhibition aims to reconstruct the reality of a besieged and absurd landscape. We bring to the surface the world of Gaza; the invisibles with their resilient practices.” The showcases on display illustrate the alternate usage of various materials salvaged from the ruins. Some of them include rammed earth, recycled crushed concrete from the rubble, reused reconstruction bars, clay-fired and unfired, corrugated metal as well as recycled timber and cardboard.

While the objects on their own may not make sense, in their accumulation they construct a fragment of an alternate reality - a world of impermanence and possibility that is not obsessed with the image at the expense of others. – Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari

Retaining any canonical architectural (and otherwise) definitions and terminologies appears futile in the context of consistent and drawn-out conflicts, especially in the East and Global South, where every typology of infrastructure sees itself transformed to accommodate extant conditions. Hence, Sharif and Golzari insist on completely rejecting the prevailing denominations of peace, progress, liberation, modernity, innovation and wellness that dominate our contemporary language and context. Reclaiming impermanence as an agent of hope, the architects assert, “In the context of Gaza, the beauty of impermanence stands as a testament to the power of resilience, giving rise to a new facet of the scarred landscape – a new skin that reclaims the right to the city.”

The culture of sharing embedded in daily rituals is the opposite of the dominant culture of consumption and the commodification of resources at the expense of our ecology. – Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari

Backtracking to Darwish's poetic stance, one remembers the enduring hope and resilience conveyed through his words, as well as the poiesis of Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said and many more from the yesteryear, which serve as both a means of comfort and a melancholic testament to the unabated prolongment of colonialism in the region for almost eight decades. The architecture in such regions, must, clearly, not be studied through vocabularies and ethics formalised by those divorced from such realities. In such spaces that have been rendered impermanent, agency can be expressed through infrastructure that is not obsessed with branding itself in superlatives, is impermanent and ephemeral, adaptable and polytropic, one that references and honours the 'monument' of hope and resilience, one that defies compartmentalisation suited to wasteful societies, and is designed in favour of communal wellbeing, an assertion that Sharif and Golzari, too, vehemently prescribe to, as their ethos and guiding principle.

Click on the banner video to view the conversation with Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari.