SAT Research's first seminar will be held on March 19th, 2022. Titled, Living Continuity: A Collective Inquiry, This installation focuses on local challenges to preserving robust, sustainable and inclusive neighbourhoods. Questions we will be asking include: How can we reimagine rapidly eroding regional sensitivities and knowledge systems? How can architecture and urbanism practitioners, educators and stakeholders begin to tackle precipitous global urbanization while operating in a vast field of economic, political and social demands? Committed to growing a repository of local knowledge production and fostering community-building through ongoing collaborative engagement, we invite individuals who are interested in participating to join our invited speakers and discussants for the full-day event. Please send expressions of interest by March 15. Seats are limited and confirmations of your registration will be sent by email on March 17. 

Session I, alternatives to urban expansion, will open the discussion with Mona El-Mousfy's insights stemming from her research-based practice and the application of adaptive reuse methods in Sharjah City, and Khaled Galal Ahmed, who offers alternative solutions to social housing in the UAE to challenge the prevalence of Western housing models.  

Session II, urban networks as critical space, features Khaled Alawadi's morphological mappings of alleyways in Abu Dhabi and Dubai revealing the potential impact of these micro-networks and Beatriz Itzel Cruz Megchun's framework for design for social interdependence.  

Session III, forms of community expulsion and exclusion, will conclude the day's sessions with Bhoomika Ghaghada's analysis of the cultural expulsion in the Karama neighborhood of Dubai that questions what is lost when something is redeveloped and Juan-Roldan Martin's observations of urban appropriation and rituals established by inhabitants that defy constructs of imported Western park models in the UAE. 

The event will take place at the disused Al Jubail Vegetable Market in Sharjah in a segment of the semi-open, naturally ventilated building. The site, previously slated for demolition after the market was relocated, is currently being programmed by the Sharjah Architecture Triennial and the Sharjah Art Foundation for temporary events and exhibitions. It is planned to be the future home of SAT Research among other institutional activities and public programmes.