Salient Extension : Rethinking Dubai's Live/Work

American University of Sharjah, College of Architecture, art and Design, Sharjah

Project idea

Salient Extension, an art and design creative campus, proposes an alternative mode to the homogeneity of urban occupation within Dubai. Fostering senses of curiosity and discovery through the assembly and direct engagement of local material ecology. The project is assembled through an additive-subtractive quarrying process of stone, where the products of extraction and leftovers are re-purposed within the spaces at different scales in response to specific programmatic and structural functions.

Project description

Curious by nature, the human compulsion for exploration and discovery is stymied by contemporary urbanity characterized by a globalized sameness. The over inscription of behavioral and spatial codes structure repetitive and largely unconscious routines.
Dubai exemplifies the contemporary global city in which rapid growth and normative spectacle blurs distinctions specific to a place by minimizing geographic, cultural, and social character. Air conditioned homogeneity allows for hasty movement and minimal engagement. However, Dubai is surrounded by an immense desert landscape uninhibited by inscribed codes. Newcomers to the desert find their sense of propriety unsuited for a place without preexisting paths, relying on curiosity to discover new modes of occupation.
“Salient Extension” proposes an alternative to the expanding urban form by leveraging this sense of curiosity and discovery to encourage new, non-normative spatial structures that support creative production and direct engagement with the material ecology native to the site.
The project, an art and design creative campus for the Sharjah Art Foundation, is assembled through an additive-subtractive quarrying process that foregrounds and celebrates the local stone native to the context. The products of extraction and leftovers are re-purposed within the project at different scales in response to specific programmatic and structural functions.

Technical information

The project understood precisely the quarrying process as well as the finishing of the products in order to get as close as possible to a net zero waste through the subtractive-additive approach. By knowing the exact outcome of the quarrying as well as the dimensions and details of the products, we were able to allocate them specifically for spatial and structural needs. This was achieved through computational algorithms that constructs the geometries we have imputed with parts that are to scale with the quarried stone. Every space has custom made parts that are mostly robotically milled on site.

Co-authors

Team:
Ibrahim Ibrahim and Maryam AlJomairi
http://www.ibibrahim.com/
http://www.maryamaljomairi.com/

Tutors : Michael Hughes and Fernando Menis
American University of Sharjah - College of Architecture, Art, and Design