Second Cycle of the Modern Heritage Grant Program (2026–2027)
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.
Key Dates
31 October 2026 by 11:59 pm
The last day to apply for the second cycle of the Modern Heritage Grant Program.
November– December 2026
Review of applications submitted for the second cycle of the Modern Heritage Grant Program.
January 2027
Notification to grant winners of the second cycle of the Modern Heritage Grant Program and contract signing.
Eligibility Criteria
- Open to researchers, practitioners, and academics, who are interested in the modern architecture heritage of the UAE.
- Proposals must address the built environment of the UAE from mid to the end of the 20th century. Current and/or future impacts and influences of the period can also be considered.
- Submissions can be made by individuals or collectives and are open to residents and non-residents of the UAE. However, lead grant holders must be UAE residents. If you are a non-resident of the UAE, you can be part of a collective submission.
- Project proposals that are related to or building on a master’s dissertation can be considered.
- All proposals (including creative works) must be built on validated primary research and must be original.
- Ongoing work shall not have previously been funded by another grant for the same project or the grant proposal must add a new aspect to the ongoing work.
- The applicant/lead investigator of the grant must be residing in the UAE during the grant period.