Sharjah is often a surprise to first-time visitors. Upon arrival, they find little of the glitz and architectural excesses of neighboring Dubai, and instead a more modest, even walkable city, bustling with street life. A town of seafarers and pearl divers until the mid-20th century, Sharjah missed out on most of the oil wealth that reshaped the UAE after independence of 1971. As a result, nation-building efforts left a trace that is still present in its urban fabric, in the shape of modernist schools and office buildings that often relied on the same typology repeated across the emirate. Buildings such as the now-vacant Radisson Blu Resort, designed by The
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