Grant Cycle 1 -2025
Theme for Cycle 1 Edition
Modern Heritage as Living Practice: Adaptation, Memory, Contribution, and Futures-
Modern heritage is increasingly recognized as a dynamic and evolving field of knowledge, reflecting the ways buildings, landscapes, and communities adapt, endure, and acquire new meanings over time. This theme invites projects that move beyond preservation as a static act of safeguarding the past, encouraging critical inquiry into modern heritage as a living resource shaped by environmental adaptation, everyday practices, underrepresented narratives, and emerging futures. It positions the UAE's modern heritage as a valuable source of climate knowledge, collective memory, cultural innovation, and design intelligence that can inform contemporary approaches to documentation, conservation, adaptive reuse, and sustainable development. By fostering interdisciplinary research and creative practice, the theme seeks to generate new perspectives and actionable insights that strengthen the relevance of modern heritage in addressing present and future challenges. Applicants are invited to develop research proposals within one of the focus areas outlined under this theme.
Focus Areas
1. Climate Intelligence:
- Focuses on passive cooling, shade, ventilation, orientation, courtyards, thresholds, Material experimentation in hot and arid environments. How traditional environmental knowledge informed modern construction, and Lessons from modern heritage for future climate-responsive design
2. Everyday Modernities:
- Explores housing, schools, civic buildings, markets, oral histories, social histories, and lived experiences connected to modern buildings, and the ways modern architecture shaped daily life and collective memory in the UAE.
3. Modern Contributions and Regional Networks:
- Highlights the people, communities, and networks behind modern heritage, including Emirati architects, planners, women’s contributions, GCC connections, industrial heritage, and community-generated archives.
4. Future Conservation and Digital Practice
- Looks at adaptive reuse, digital documentation, AI, heritage visualization, conservation techniques, and how modern heritage can inform future cities and cultural development.
Apply for 2025 – 2026 cycle
To ensure sending a successful application, those wishing to apply should review the Eligibility Criteria section and share all the required documents.
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