The Sharjah Architecture Triennial has announced the full opening programme for its third edition, Architecture Otherwise: Building Civic Infrastructure for Collective Futures. The opening week takes place from 14 to 19 November and will unfold across venues throughout the Emirate, including Al Qasimiyah School, Al Jubail Vegetable Market, Al Madam Buried Village and the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation.

Curated by writer and anthropologist Vyjayanthi Rao with Associate Curator Tau Tavengwa and co-curated by Sharmeen Inayat, the edition brings together 35 participants working across architecture, art, research, performance and film. Its central idea is that architecture is more than buildings, and it is shaped by the relationships, practices, knowledge and exchanges that enable collective life.

The six-day opening programme combines participant-lead projects, live interventions, film screenings, lectures and roundtable discussions. Highlights include Tumblespace (or What Binds Us?) by Aslıhan Demirtaş, Ali Cindoruk and Dilşad Aladağ, a nomadic structure designed to create temporary spaces for gathering and exchange. Badriyah Alsalem will present performance lectures exploring landscape, time and the sky, while Ali Sethi’s BORROWED TIME: trails and tentacles in popular music examines sound, culture and space. Choreographer Omar Rajeh’s Origami Bodies and bassist Melvin Gibbs’s Convergence will further explore movement, rhythm and connection.

Film screenings will look at urban life and infrastructure through different geographies, from Kinshasa in The Tower: A Concrete Utopia and Mumbai in Housing Agency: Incremental Mumbai to Santiago in Sanhattan and Ahmedabad in Memories of Milk City. Conversations will bring together architects, artists, researchers and curators, including Edgar Pieterse, Mabel O. Wilson and Paola Antonelli, to discuss how everyday practices and social relations give meaning to the built environment.

The programme culminates on 18 and 19 November with a two-day conference at Africa Hall, organised with Global Studies University. Titled Area Studies, Global Studies and Urban Studies: History, Politics and the Epistemology of Locality, it will gather international scholars, architects and artists to examine how knowledge about cities is produced and how local histories can challenge dominant ideas of urban development.

With its mix of exhibitions, public gatherings and critical discussion, SAT03 positions architecture as a civic practice, one that considers how people live together, adapt their surroundings and imagine shared futures.