Lecture: Wael Al Awar

Wael Al Awar
Wetland: A Future Vernacular
Presented with the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT

Can industrial waste produced by our cities lead us to a future vernacular for architecture? Today, it is clear that we urgently need to question the way we use materials and design space. Faced with an ongoing environmental crisis, architects have a responsibility to explore local resources and seek out possibilities that can help repair the imbalances caused by decades of industrial production and unsustainable living patterns. In response to this urgency, waiwai was drawn to the UAE’s sabkhas, salt formations in a wetland ecosystem that constitutes 5% of the country’s geography. Wetlands are nature’s laboratories, transitional spaces between land and water where biodiversity thrives. The sabkhas also contain important lessons from architectural history, with notable examples such as Siwa in western Egypt. Industrial desalination operations in the UAE are a source of large quantities of wastewater brine, which can be used as a structural material just as sabkhas once were. Working in collaboration with a research laboratory at New York University Abu Dhabi, waiwai developed a cement compound using brine as a binding agent and partnered with the University of Tokyo to develop a method of digital fabrication. This prototype was presented as Wetland at the UAE Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale and 2021, where it was recognized with the Golden Lion. In this talk, Wael Al Awar, founding partner of waiwai, addresses the potential for industrial waste to offer solutions for designing and building that also reintroduce local culture and identity into architectural production. This extended research informs waiwai’s approach to projects in the UAE, Japan, and beyond.

Lectures are free and open to the public.

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