Field Notes on Scarcity

Scarcity of resources as a stimulator for of innovation, inspiration, and ingenuity: reflections, poems, visual essays, and dialogues contributed by 60 scholars and practitioners of architecture from across the Global South.

Scarcity of resources in all forms is commonly portrayed in a negative light. Yet these conditionswhich have long been a reality in many extreme climate conditions across the global South and are increasingly becoming a global realityoften stimulate an abundance of innovation, inspiration, and ingenuity. Permanence has created a climate crisis, with spaces constructed with non-degradable materials, resource extraction without active replenishment, and buildings designed for a single-eternal use. Our present reality is marked by a global pandemic, violent conflicts, and the looming threat of climate change-induced environmental disasters. Yet there remains an optimism about the creative possibilities that arise within these constraints.

Field Notes on Scarcity, published in conjunction with the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial, examines what scarcity truly looks like on the ground, and the challenges and opportunities it presents across architecture and design. Sixty scholars and practitioners from across the Global Southincluding Lesley Lokko, Yinka Shonibare, Formafantasma, Rahul Mehrotra, Olalekan Jeyifous, Abeer Seikaly, Ilze and Heinrich Wolff, Chitra Vishwanath, and Deema Assafcontribute reflections, poems, visual essays, and dialogues exploring what scarcity represents, what it inspires, and what it reveals.

• Scarcity of resources is increasingly becoming a global reality
• This is the first book to address cultures of re-use, re-appropriation, innovation and collaboration in architecture and urban design that arise from conditions of scarcity
• 60 leading architects, artists, authors, curators, designers, photographers, researchers, and theoreticians share their perspectives on how to build a sustainable future in our precarious present
• Highlights the lessons to be learned from practitioners and communities in the Global South, where long-standing traditions prioritize an understanding of impermanence, inventive responsiveness to scarcity of resources

• Official publication of the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial (November 11th, 2023 until March 10th, 2024)

  Autorentext

  Tosin Oshinowo is an architect, creative entrepreneur, public speaker, and author based in Lagos, where she runs her own design consultancy firm CmDesign Atelier. She is the curator of the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial.

Julie Cirelli is a Stockholm-based American journalist and editor specializing in architecture and design.