Living Continuity, the first instalment of SAT Research’s Seminar Series, is an invitation to begin a collective, multiscalar and contextualized inquiry on the challenges and potentialities of working towards a socially and ecologically just urban future. Beginning at the scale of the neighbourhood, the first seminar focuses on local challenges to preserving robust, sustainable and inclusive neighbourhoods.

Session I on alternatives to urban expansion features Mona El-Mousfy’s insights into her research-based practice and the application of adaptive reuse in Sharjah City, and Khaled Galal Ahmed, who offers alternative solutions to social housing in the UAE to challenge the prevalence of Western housing models.

Mona El-Mousfy is an architect and the founder of SpaceContinuum, a research-based architecture practice that explores the relation between space, shared social practices and socio-cultural conditions. El-Mousfy is the Advisor to the Sharjah Architecture Triennial and played a key role in founding the initiative in 2017. She is also the Architecture Consultant for the Sharjah Art Foundation where she has worked on several projects including the successive editions of the Sharjah Biennial since 2005.

El-Mousfy is currently engaged in various adaptive reuse projects leading a team of architects at the Sharjah Art Foundation and the Sharjah Architecture Triennial. Among other projects, she designed the SAF Art Spaces Al Mureijah, 2013, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Agha Khan award for Architecture. Her most recent adaptive reuse project is the Flying Saucer, 2020, where she has restored the original mid-70s character of the building while introducing a new outdoor public space and a lower-level community space around a sunken courtyard.

El-Mousfy has previously taught at the College of Architecture Art and Design, American University of Sharjah, where she had a full-time position from 2002 to 2014.