An urban legacy

A new book chronicling Sharjah’s modern urban landscape offers a wide-ranging view of the UAE’s third-largest city

The United Arab Emirate’s third-largest city has been gaining global recognition for its efforts across education, environmental preservation and, particularly, the arts and the built environment, with many new and upcoming architectural projects by regional and international firms placing the city on the map as one to watch.

While its contemporary projects are gaining traction in the architectural world, Sharjah’s early modernist buildings have been either largely demolished or – albeit recently – renovated for preservation.

Co-edited by Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi and Todd Reisz and published by Birkhäuser, Building Sharjah is a new book that preserves the memories of the city’s urban landscape, “including the parts once imagined, and those no longer to be found.”