Hiding in plain sight
Sharjah Architecture Triennial’s walking tours celebrate the city’s early modernist designs and reveal some surprising history.
By Nicola Chilton
The occasional beep of a horn and hiss of an air brake punctuate the constant hum of traffic along King Abdulaziz Street in Sharjah. Very little along its strip of cafeterias, typing centres, mobile phone stores and gents’ salons distinguishes it from most other roads in the city.
But this street holds a secret. Before it became a highway, this strip of tarmac was the runway of the UAE’s first airport, the centre of aviation in what would eventually become one of the most connected countries in the world.
As recently as 1977, aircraft were taking off and landing right here, and where we’re standing—opposite Al Sorour Bakeries and the ICICI Bank—is the runway’s halfway point, explains Sahil Abdul Latheef, curator of public programmes at Sharjah Architecture Triennial (SAT) and an architect himself. This spot is also a stop on one of the new SAT Tours, a series of guided walks aimed at mapping the neighbourhoods of contemporary Sharjah and the architectural and urban projects that define them. The walks take place monthly, with the itinerary announced during the first week of the month. They last around two hours, and while joining is free, registration is required.
The tours explore—at street level—Sharjah’s urban development from a historic settlement along the creek to the diverse neighbourhoods inland that flourished as the city underwent rapid growth. The Al Jubail tour explores the souk district’s commercial infrastructure, built largely in the 1970s and 80s, including the old vegetable souk and bus station. In Al Ghuwair it takes in grand public buildings and squares, from the Emiri Diwan to Rolla Square, still a popular meeting point. In Al Shuwaiheen, the tour explores the city’s historic heart including coral-built courtyard houses typical of the Gulf and the iconic modernist towers of Bank Street. Today, we are walking in Al Qasimia, once home to a British Royal Air Force (RAF) base.
Opening image: The tours, led by curator and architect Sahil Abdul Latheef, explore Sharjah’s urban development at street level. Above: Al Mahatta Museum explores the city’s history as an aviation pioneer.
Walking the streets with Latheef is a revelation. “Because everyone travels by high-speed roads you’re always on the periphery,” he tells me as we walk across a stretch of grass shaded by tall date palms in front of the Al Mahatta Museum.
The walks are the first part of the Triennial’s public programming after a two-year break due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They attract students of architecture, urban planners, and Sharjah residents interested in learning more about their home.
Buildings dating back only 40 to 50 years inhabit that grey area where they’re too young for people to feel much nostalgia towards them, but aren’t new enough to represent how an ambitious, modernising city wants to be perceived. Many of Sharjah’s modernist treasures have already been lost to the wrecking ball, with more slated for redevelopment. But rather than become nostalgic for what is gone, SAT remembers the impact those lost buildings made, identifies significant structures that still exist and, in some cases, rescues them.
Walking the streets with Latheef is a revelation. “Because everyone travels by high-speed roads you’re always on the periphery,” he tells me as we walk across a stretch of grass shaded by tall date palms in front of the Al Mahatta Museum.
Long before Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports existed, aviation was advanced in Sharjah. Its airstrip became an important refuelling and overnight stop for flights between Britain and its colonies. But the airport wasn’t only used for commercial operations. In 1940, as WW2 escalated, an RAF base was established on the site, the barracks of which form a significant part of the walk we’re doing now. The borders of the base, Latheef explains, shaped the way the city evolved, its urban mass forced to grow around it. The British left in 1971, but the airport continued to operate commercially until the current Sharjah Airport opened in 1979. In the rush of modernisation, the airport buildings were largely ignored, becoming housing before being restored and reopened as the museum in 2000.
Top: The Cordoba and Granada Buildings on Bank Street. Middle: Al Qasimiyah School was designed by Khatib and Alami. Some 45 schools were built across the UAE using the same prototype. Today, about 30 remain. Bottom: the city’s old Jubail Souk, built in the early 1980s.
We head into the heart of what used to be the barracks, today a sandy, largely undeveloped square. Latheef points out the site of the barracks’ Christian church. Initially housed in a makeshift shed, it evolved into St Martin’s Anglican Church, which today lies across the street in a more modern building in the Yarmuk neighbourhood.
In the sandy square, a collection of 1970s stone bungalows that were once home to the Sharjah Radio Station studios are being restored by the Sharjah Art Foundation as exhibition venues. We continue our walk to the site of the UAE’s first open-air cinema, the Sharjah Paramount, opened in 1943 as a facility for RAF staff, and later expanded to the general public. With tickets costing just one quarter of a rupee, it was accessible to all. Today the site is still a gathering place, with the Al Emam Al Nawawi Mosque forming its centre.
As we walk farther into the Al Manakh neighbourhood, Latheef explains that as Sharjah rapidly modernised it aimed to create model neighbourhoods, including education facilities, healthcare centres and parks. On Al Manakh 9th Street, we walk past a former kindergarten built in 1981 to a design by architects George Rais and Jafar Tukan. The Arab modernists, based in Beirut, were commissioned to design a prototype that could be replicated across the UAE. Of the tens that were built, some have been demolished and others repurposed (this one is now a government building). The kindergartens are distinguished by pyramidal roofs that draw up heat with a windtower, or barjeel, integrated into the centre.
Our walk ends at another example of a mid-1970s prototype by the design firm Khatib and Alami, the former Al Qasimiyah School, now home to SAT offices and exhibition spaces. Some 45 similar schools were built across the UAE, recognisable by their repeating vaulted bays, perforated screens for ventilation, covered walkways, and distinctive water towers. Around 30 of these buildings remain across the country. Once slated for demolition, Al Qasimiyah School was saved by the Triennial in an effort to preserve Sharjah’s modern heritage and as an example of adaptive reuse.
The SAT tours offer valuable insight into Sharjah’s often overlooked architecture. While the buildings may not have the superlative status of some of those in Dubai, the impact they made on the development of the nation is significant, and worth treasuring for generations.
For details of future SAT Tours, see www.sharjaharchitecture.org
Photographs: Opening image by Ahmed Osama / Sharjah ArchitectuRe Triennial; Al Mahatta Museum by Nicola Chilton; The Cordoba and Granada Buildings by Sahil Abdul Latheef / Sharjah Architecture Triennial; Al Qasimiyah by Nicola Chilton; Jubail Souk by Manaswi Jinadra / Sharjah Architecture Triennial
