SpaceContinuum Design Studio turns Sharjah's brutalist Flying Saucer into arts centre
UAE-based SpaceContinuum Design Studio has collaborated with the Sharjah Art Foundation to turn a 1970s brutalist restaurant into an arts centre in Sharjah.
Originally opened in 1978 as a French restaurant and patisserie, the Flying Saucer has been renovated to become an exhibition venue for the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF), which is a pertner of both the Sharjah Architecture Triennial and the art biennial.
The Flying Saucer has been renovated by SpaceContinuum Design Studio
The local landmark, which became a supermarket in the 1980s and then a chicken restaurant in the 2000s before being purchased by the SAF in 2012, has been stripped back to reveal its original unique silhouette.
An attached annexe was removed along with its grey and orange aluminium cladding to showcase the distinctive, 32-pointed concrete dome that is supported by triangulated, intersecting columns. Internally, a false ceiling and partitions were removed to create one large space topped by the 7.3-metre high dome that will be used for major installations.
It is now a venue for the Sharjah Art Foundation
"We reversed the transformations undertaken during the Flying Saucer?s occupation by Al Taza restaurant that led to the erasure of the building's Brutalist character," explained SpaceContinuum Design Studio founder Mona El Mousfy.
"The core aim of the present restoration was to bring the Flying Saucer back to its original silhouette by removing its incongruous connected annex, reinstat...
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