At Mleiha, in the desert interior of Sharjah below Fossil Rock, an Umm an-Nar tomb of about 2300 BCE sits in the open. Sumaya Dabbagh's centre, opened in January 2016, is generated from that circle: concentric low walls of sand-coloured stone swing around the tomb, setting up a processional approach and then dropping the two thousand square metres of gallery, café and service below the horizon line. The building is deliberately quiet — Dabbagh has said the point was to show the archaeology rather than take the attention — and it works by shade, mass and indirect light rather than by silhouette. It is among the first major public buildings in the Emirates by a practice founded and led by a woman, and it took a Cityscape Global award in its opening year.
Construction in the United Arab Emirates is carried out overwhelmingly by migrant workers recruited from South Asia under the kafala sponsorship system. Human Rights Watch interviewed sixty construction workers in Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman in February 2006 and published Building Towers, Cheating Workers, documenting recruitment debt, withheld wages, confiscated passports and hazardous conditions; its 2009 report The Island of Happiness examined Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. The UAE subsequently outlawed employer confiscation of passports, eased sponsorship transfer and introduced the Wage Protection System in 2009, requiring wages to be paid through banks; the International Trade Union Confederation and migrant-rights organisations have continued to report abuses and weak enforcement. No published investigation names this project, and none of the reporting cited here concerns it specifically; the sector-wide record is stated because it is how buildings in the Emirates are built.
- Human Rights Watch, "Building Towers, Cheating Workers: Exploitation of Migrant Construction Workers in the United Arab Emirates" (November 2006)
- Human Rights Watch, "The Island of Happiness: Exploitation of Migrant Workers on Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi" (May 2009)
- International Trade Union Confederation, "UAE labour law reforms fail to address abuses of workers' rights"
- Migration Policy Institute, "Labor Migration in the United Arab Emirates: Challenges and Responses"
Wikidata Q24964896 · Commons: File:The Mleiha Archaeological Centre, built around a 4,500 year old Umm Al Nar Tomb.jpg · Photo: Alexandermcnabb · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0