The present state of environmental crisis is not an accident of history, but rather the result of a war waged along social, technical, and mental lines-a war against future generations. Climate change is the symptom of the eradication of alternative perspectives on what it means to live and to coexist.It is the consequence of a single, pathological mode of existence dominating all others. Which ecologies support this state of things, and which ecologies can resist it? Which conditions produce non-exploitative relationships between humans and other beings, between those who are here, those who have gone, and those yet to come? The intergenerational perspective is at the heart of all such questions.
The inaugural Sharjah Architecture Triennial, titled Rights of Future Generations, includes commissioned works by architects, artists, activists, choreographers, and scientists examining sites of resistance, struggle, emancipation, and experimentation. The twenty-seven essays featured in Conditions-the first of two volumes published in conjunction with the Triennial-chronicle some of these sites. From spiritual geographies of trade in the Indian Ocean, to the unwritten transmission of land title in the Ganges Delta, this is a book about architecture's fundamental role in imagining other forms of coexistence.

EXHIBITION
Sharjah Architecture Triennal
9 November, 2019-8 February, 2020

The current ecological crisis is, at its most fundamental level, the consequence of a single, extractive perspective that has come to dominate all other forms of life and coexistence. As the process that gives material substance to social formations, architecture has often contributed to this state of things, internalizing and reproducing the positions of the privileged social groups it serves. Yet architecture retains a latent potential to imagine, propose, and rehearse possible alternatives. After all, human history has furnished us with countless examples of different social orders, and of relationships between humans and other beings that evolved according to non-exploitative beliefs and commitments.
The inaugural Sharjah Architecture Triennial, titled Rights of Future Generations, looks for surviving conditions of struggle, emancipation, and experimentation from around the world. This book presents some of these conditions, compiled by the artists, architects and theorists that participate in the Triennial. From trade networks in the Indian Ocean, to unstable landownership in the Ganges Delta, to the interplay of gender norms and interior architecture in Iran's public housing, the essays help us imagine what is possible beyond the existing arrangement of things.