MY SHARJAH: AL HAMRIYAH
Juan Roldán, associate professor in the College of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah, finds creativity in the emirate’s quirky northern region.
In vacant lots and disused buildings, Juan Roldán sees not “junk space” but blank canvases on which Sharjah’s inhabitants ingeniously create new uses—sometimes ephemeral, sometimes permanent, sometimes communal, sometimes private although out in public.
“There are open areas of the city that are allowing many things to happen,” he says.
In the UAE, a terrain vague tends to be a place where a high-rise hasn’t yet been built, although Roldán compliments Sharjah’s measured pace, its backing of projects with sensitivity to their settings, and reinvention of old buildings. The UAE, he says, is “an urban laboratory happening right now, where you can witness the contradiction between the past and a vision of the future they’re always aiming for.”
It’s what excited Roldán about taking a post at AUS eight years ago, leaving his own practice in Madrid and a master’s degree programme he taught split between Madrid and Milan. At AUS, he mostly teaches interior design, although his background is urban design and planning.
The quirks of Al Hamriyah appeal to those interests and to his fascination with the potential of disused space. Al Hamriyah is “an old beach town. There are no expats living there,” he says. “That part of Sharjah’s beach is absolutely peaceful.” The village of a few thousand people, north of Sharjah city, is part of Sharjah but tucked between two other emirates—Ajman and Umm Al Quwain. It is becoming a hub for local artists, thanks to studios and exhibition spaces that Sharjah Art Foundation opened in 2017 in a former souk.
Mapping Sharjah for an AUS research project, Roldán found 285 cricket grounds that migrant workers had built in parks or on sandy lots—permanent changes by impermanent residents. But Roldán discovered that behind the games was a “quite fascinating infrastructure of car pooling and WhatsApp groups to arrange tournaments, prizes, sponsors. So it becomes a very interesting illegal network of cricket matches all over the city.”
This infrastructure allows the migrants who, say, work in hospitality to find a match even at 3 a.m., whether to play or socialise. “It gives them a feeling of belonging and creates community,” Roldán says.
Years ago, police would confiscate the players’ equipment at these unauthorised games. Instead, a win-win has evolved.
One day, as Roldán was driving on the E11 towards Al Hamriyah, he saw a sign for a helicopter training field but beyond the “no trespassing” signs were men playing cricket. The disused helipads had been recycled into cricket pitches. “At last count there were 34,” he says.
The landowners had leased the area to the military, which no longer needed it. Some businessmen, mainly Indians and Pakistanis living in the UAE, then leased the land and rented it to groups of players far more cheaply than the formal cricket grounds that were beyond their budgets. The players rake the terrain daily, collect rubbish and set up a cooler system for water and lockers for equipment. They are building shade and generator-powered floodlights. “This is a very well-crafted and organised community,” he says of the cricket crowd.
The juxtaposition of public and private intrigues Roldán and is everywhere in the UAE. “There are many kinds of liturgies and activities that happen at many levels in outdoor rooms,” he says. Urban Emiratis love camping in the desert, he notes. The migrant labour building the emirates’ skyscrapers also turn to outdoor rooms. Unable to socialise in their cramped dormitories, they picnic with friends wherever they can—in a park, at a traffic roundabout. “Their need to have privacy sometimes happens in public spheres,” Roldán says.
“There has been more civility about these activities,” Roldán says. “It’s about finding a formula so everybody benefits.”
PHOTO BY JUAN ROLDÁN
