interview: faysal tabbarah curates UAE pavilion at venice biennale

faysal tabbarah on curating the UAE national pavilion

Aridity, abundance, and sustainability rooted in notions of history, anthropological memory, and identity are key themes encapsulated by the UAE’s National Pavilion for the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. ‘Aridly Abundant’ will comprise a series of ‘environments and spaces’ that exhibit the diverse spatial, material, and tactical qualities of the UAE’s Al Hajar Mountain range — from its desert plateaus and wadis to its coastal plains — while examining their relationship with architecture.

Unearthing historical land-based practices and a nuanced understanding of these conditions infused with innovative technological tools, the installation reimagines these areas as thriving spaces of preservation and productivity. By displaying a variety of methodologies and attitudes that can be adaptable to other perishing regions, the project instigates a backdrop for architectural provocations for future global arid contexts for the renowned design festival’s 18^th edition.

To find out more about the UAE National Pavilion’s underlying research and implications, designboom spoke with its curator Faysal Tabbarah, uncovering insights into how the proposal questions architectural possibilities within the UAE’s arid landscapes, and how they can challenge traditional perceptions of spaces and cultures to build more sustainably in the future. Responding to the Biennale’s 2023 theme: The Laboratory of the Future, the architect considers how the region’s centuries-old historical building practices can pose critical lessons for various communities approaching the threat of desertification and aridity. Working at the intersection of land-based practices in architecture and contemporary technology, ‘the exhibition will explore how these practices could be shared with other countries facing similar impacts of climate change,’ Tabbarah tells designboom.

image courtesy of National Pavilion UAE La Biennale di Venezia | © Reem Falaknaz

building in, for, and with with the uae’s arid landscapes

Introducing the overarching theme of ‘Aridly Abundant’, Faysal Tabbarah begins by posing the key question: ‘What architectural conditions can become possible when we reimagine arid landscapes as spaces of abundance?’ The underlying research, the architect tells designboom, seeks to resolve this in three fundamental ways by asking: ‘how can we build in, for, and with arid landscapes? Building in arid landscapes essentially acknowledges that there is precarity in aridity.’ Constructing in these landscapes in modern society unveils complex scenarios, which involves ‘exploring how the intersection between contemporary technologies and land-based practices can provoke resilient, context-specific built environments that adapt and react to the challenges imposed by surrounding conditions of aridity.’

Considering how we can build with aridity, on the other hand, means rethinking extractive material practices. By exploring found, earthen materials within arid landscapes, Tabbarah proposes that we can begin to construct environmentally sustainable and culturally rooted built environments. Finally, building for arid landscapes begins with acknowledging the threat of aridity as a future global condition. In exploring resources, conditions, and knowledge embedded within arid landscapes, we can not only revive local spaces but also begin to pose critical lessons for regions confronting emerging aridity accelerated by the climate crisis.

image courtesy of National Pavilion UAE — Venice Biennale | © Reem Falaknaz

overlaying historical processes and technological tools

Unearthing various kinds of construction methods in the Al Hajar Mountain range through a series of archival, documental, and community-based research methods, Faysal Tabbarah suggests that: ‘[The pavilion’s key attempt] is to learn from these kinds of historical practices and integrate them with a technology-driven workflow to present architectural provocations. If you integrate land-based practice with technology, you can explore environmentally efficient avenues rooted in the materials and historical, cultural history.’

This, naturally, leads to devising a more sustainable building typology for the future: adapting historical building practices which are no longer mainstream — such as traditional stone construction methods — and reviving and ‘tweaking’ them with contemporary tools to cultivate our perishing natural surroundings. Tabbarah poses that by looking closer at history, ‘we can find solutions that are born out of these landscapes, as opposed to fully imported solutions’. On top of this knowledge, he continues, we can overlay the array of technological tools we have available today to ‘potentially provoke a more sustainable future.’ To do so, historical knowledge and technological acumen must go hand in hand — the solution lies somewhere in between.

image courtesy of National Pavilion UAE – Venice Biennale | © Reem Falaknaz

‘aridly abundant’ — reviving land-based practices

Materializing these pivotal notions, the UAE National Pavilion will take shape as a transportive, immersive installation of sorts — ‘an environment with a series of assemblies that integrate land-based practice with technology to provoke architectural possibilities for future landscapes’, as Tabbarah puts it. The culminating exhibition form follows the team’s ongoing ‘Other Environmentalism’ research project, injecting techno-specific expertise such as 3D scanning and 3D printing into historical environmental, cultural, and construction research.

In fusing these practices with modern technologies, the team behind ‘Aridly Abundant’ has examined a host of micro-climates at the Al Hajar Mountain range, ‘foraging for potential waste material that might not otherwise be used in mainstream construction.’ Gathering large quantities of earthen elements such as local stone from a range of diverse environments, the team 3D scans the materials, feeding them into a streamlined, digital workflow to become pivotal information to guide a new architectural typology.

constructing for a more sustainable future

Representing the UAE at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, ‘Aridly Abundant’ not only responds to the year’s theme of The Laboratory of the Future by rethinking ‘spaces of scarcity’ as ‘spaces of abundance’ for future architectural practices but also stands as a global precedent. Concluding our conversation, Faysal Tabbarah reflects on the growing global phenomenon of arid landscapes emerging in previously unaffected territories such as in Italy and California, calling for the need to adapt our ways of living for a sustainable future.

While the UAE has been dealing with aridity for several centuries now, Tabbarah notes that these newly affected environments, unequipped to deal with such conditions, can learn from the UAE’s deep well of knowledge in historically constructing for aridity while adapting today’s innovative technological know-how.