Earth to Earth

The project is a response to the theme of “The Beauty of Impermanence” for The Sharjah Architecture Triennial second edition held in Sharjah UAE from Nov 2023 to March 2024. Earth to Earth “From the earth we created you, and into it we will return you, and from it we will extract you another time” Holy Quran, Sūrat Tāhā, verse 55. Introduction: Not long ago , our grandparents were closely connected to the land. The fishermen and the Pearl divers knew the sea; the Shepard’s knew the mountains; The Bedouins understood the desert, they could read the sky. But within a short span of time, in our race towards progress and modernity, we adopted borrowed architecture that brought with it foreign materials. These have since shaped our modern landscape, and within this new environment, we quickly lost our connections to the Earth and to the sky. We forgot the stories that they carried. When a building creates dialogue with its setting it can support the community’s connection to place, to the land and to their heritage. Concept: Earth to Earth is an exploration of the inherent and collective memories held in materials: the Earth and the palm tree. It is an invitation to remember our lost connections to the land and to our heritage. Mud, made up of both earth and water possesses the broad spectrum of these two elements, creating a duality. It embodies both solidity and fluidity, motion and stillness, permanence and impermanence. Mud’s ability to dissolve and be reformed creates its physical circularity. With it, embodied memory of all form’s past, has a generational circularity that taps into our collective memory of the past, and triggers a collective imagination for the future. Form The enclosed court provides an intimate experience of the form. The installation consists of two curved walls built in mudbrick creating a semi-enclosed space. The form represents dualities and the relationships of opposites. The visitor is invited to enter the central semi-enclosed space where the sound of recited poetry by Sumaya Dabbagh can be heard as a further invitation to pause, sit, reflect and contemplate the liminal space between memory and imagination. An invitation to remember. Generational Circularity The concept of circularity is the natural order of life. There is an inherent understanding that everything is subject to the cycle of life and death, growth and decay. Evolution and transformation are also part of this natural order. There is also the notion of a long continuous thread that is embedded in our spirit. A thread that link us to our ancestral history through felt experiences that become memories, thus representing the circularity of living energy or spirit. This project explores the relationship of material with its intangible qualities as well as collective memory and material imagination. Of how physical matter can be an agent to support the experience of these intangible concepts.