EARTH LAYERS
Send your finishes schedule
What Sharjah asks of a schedule
Sharjah is the one emirate with coastline on both the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and our work sits on the eastern shore. A beachfront site changes the specification before anything else does: salt-laden air, wind-driven sand and a water table close to the surface all argue for a stabilised mix and for detailing that keeps standing water away from the base of a wall.
It also changes the sequencing. At Kalba Beach the roof slab was craned onto the completed walls only once they carried their own load, which is a programme decision as much as a structural one — the wall is finished the moment it is built and cannot be corrected afterwards with a coating.
What we have built here
At Kalba Beach we built in-situ stabilised rammed earth for Shurooq, the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority — a public-realm beachfront site metres from the sea. It is our built rammed earth reference in the Emirates, and the one we point specifiers to when they want to see the material standing in this climate rather than in a photograph from elsewhere.
The site mock-up came first there, as it does everywhere: a full-size panel with the specification board fixed to it, approved before the permanent walls were started.
Materials in Sharjah
Everything in the catalogue is supplied and installed in Sharjah. Rammed earth is the material with a built reference in the emirate; the rest are supplied on the same terms.
Further reading
Written for specifiers working in Sharjah and the wider Emirates.
Tell us about the Sharjah project
Send the finishes schedule with the Sharjah address on it. We will come back with the specification clauses, the samples, and an honest answer on what a coastal site changes.