OFFICE 124

This set of gardens was designed and built for the 11th Sharjah Biennial 11, curated by Yuko Hasegawa. After developing a strategy to urbanise the existing heritage area of Sharjah during the biennial, OFFICE created a set of pavilions, which both through their volumetric presence complete the city fabric, as they create small gardens for the neighbourhood. The three pavilions consist of a simple steel structure covered in transparent steel mesh walls, framing a lush oasis-like garden. The three gardens have varying degrees of public accessibility, each creating a dialogue with specific urban contexts and their users. As lightweight and permeable pavilions that show glimpses of their garden-content, these new structures are contemporary versions of the traditional additions to the old city, where courtyard perimeters were continuously added to the existing fabric. The new Garden Pavilions apply this logic today, and smuggle a set of oasis gardens for the public disguised as architecture back into the maze of the Arabic city fabric, in which public space has become almost non-existent.