This set of gardens was designed and built for the 11th Sharjah Biennial, directed by the Japanese curator Yuko Hasegawa. After developing a strategy to urbanize the existing heritage area of Sharjah, the design proposed a set of pavilions that complete the city fabric through their volumetric presence, and at the same time create small gardens for the neighborhood, necessary spaces in an extreme climate as that of the Persian Gulf. 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 old city fabric, in which public space has become almost non-existent...
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