Timeframe: The UAE’s evolving presence at the Venice Architectural Biennale

Looking back on the five remarkable projects the UAE has brought to the event

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  Lest We Forget: Structures of Memory in the UAE ​​​​​​was the first exhibition from the UAE for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2014. All photos: National Pavilion UAE

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  Transformations: The Emirati National House exhibition at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale

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  Visitors to the Venice Biennale examining Lifescapes Beyond Bigness, the UAE’s National Pavilion exhibition in 2018

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  The UAE pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale was entitled Wetlands and presented an environmentally friendly, salt-based cement

On Saturday, the Venice Architectural Biennale returns with a striking theme, challenging participants to imagine what the future might hold. The UAE has returned for a fifth time, with a project inspired by the Hajar mountains, exploring how arid climates can be reimagined as sources of abundance.

The La Biennale di Venezia, also known as the Venice Biennale, is a long-established platform for the arts, dating back to 1895. Since then, the festival has grown to include elements of music, cinema, theatre and dance. In 1980, the first International Architecture Exhibition officially took place and has since been held every other year. The event has become an important platform for architects to display their solutions to humanistic and technological issues affecting contemporary society.

The UAE, which has over the years developed a distinct and evolving architectural identity, first joined international architects and pavilions at the 14th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014. The debut national pavilion for the UAE, Lest We Forget: Structures of Memory in the United Arab Emirates was created in response to the theme, Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014.

Curated by Michele Bambling in collaboration with the research team of architects Adina Hempel and Marco Sosa, the UAE’s first official offering to the biennale presented an archive of architectural and urban development in the UAE.

With a strong emphasis on the 1970s and1980s, the exhibition examined how public and residential architecture, built within the rapid expanding urban context of the country, shaped and established the UAE’s architectural language and its emergence on the international stage.

The exhibition featured pull-out drawers, in a large dark room, for viewers to examine. The drawers contained detailed drawings and photographs of the UAE’s architectural history.

It was one of the first instances where an international audience was able to see and understand the UAE’s architectural history beyond the image of a country whose glass sky scrapers rose in the middle of the desert seemingly overnight.

Since 2014, the UAE has actively presented its architectural perspective at the biennale in thorough, relevant and nuanced exhibitions. In 2016, the UAE presented Transformations: The Emirati National House, curated by Yasser Elsheshtawy, author and at the time associate professor of architecture at UAE University. The exhibition explored the transformative aspect of the housing model of Emirati national homes, known as Sha’abi’ [folk] houses.

The UAE's award-winning pavilion and exhibition at the 2021 Venice Biennale. Photo: UAE National Pavilion

Lifescapes Beyond Bigness was the UAE’s National Pavilion exhibition in 2018. The exhibition highlighted the play between built environments and informal social life, based on scenes of everyday life in the UAE – through four human-scale urban landscapes that included images, technical drawings, maps and three-dimensional models.

Due to Covid-19, the 2020 edition of the Venice Biennale was postponed to the following year. The 2021 exhibition, curated by Wael Al Awar and Kenichi Teramoto, was entitled Wetland and presented an environmentally friendly, salt-based cement alternative capable of reducing the construction industry’s impact on the climate.

Wetland won the Golden Lion Award for Best National Participation that year and was described by the Biennale jury as, “a bold experiment that encourages us to think about the relationship between waste and production on a local and global scale and opens us to new construction possibilities between craft and high technology".

This year's Venice Biennale runs from Saturday until November 26, and the UAE Pavilion is curated by Faysal Tabbarah, associate dean and associate professor of architecture at the American University of Sharjah.