May 2013
7 posts
6 tags
Lessons from elsewhere: Milan Design Week, When...
Around the world this spring and summer several international events take place at several cities, the Cannes Film festival, the Sharjah Biennial, the Venice Biennial and others are events that bring flocks of visitors interested in particular cultural productions such as film and art to those cities. The events serve various functions from energizing the economies of cities to revitalizing...
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Resident Perspective: Maadi Degla
Resident Perspective is a series of standardized interviews with Cairo residents to get their views on the city and their neighborhoods.
Where in Cairo do you live? I live in Maadi Degla and will be moving to Dokki soon. This area is a tasteless cut-and-paste of the West.
List the most positive and the most negative aspects of living there. The positive aspects: lots of trees and quietness...
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CUIP: Introducing the Cairo Urban Initiatives...
The Cairo Urban Initiatives Platform is a project by CLUSTER. CUIP “is a bilingual Arabic/English online directory and a shared calendar of events for the multiple art, culture, architecture, advocacy, urban development and interdisciplinary organizations/initiatives addressing issues related to the city, the urban environment and public space in Cairo. CUIP offers an expanding index of...
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Cairo's 19th century transformation in 7 points
Cairo, like many cities across the globe, underwent a significant process of urban transformation in the mid-19th century. At the core of these transformations, which can be traced in cities from Latin America, Europe, and Asia, are sewage systems, street lighting, and drinking water systems. Most of these major infrastructural changes happen below street level, which explains why commentators...
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Event: Parallel Practice
Panel Discussion at the Arab Academy for Science & Technology, Architecture Department. “Parallel Practice” includes speakers Omnia Khlail and Ahmed Zaazaa. Wednesday May 15 at 4:30pm in Gamal Mokhtar Hall (Building A).
“ممارسة موازية” محاضرة و مناقشة تضم امنية خليل و احمد زعزع. الاكاديمية العربية للعلوم و التكنولوجيا، قسم عمارة. يوم ١٥ مايو الساعة ٤،٣٠. قاعة...
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Artists as Urban Catalysts in Downtown Cairo
Last December the Geothe Institute hosted a panel discussion titled “Artists as Urban Catalysts in Downtown Cairo.” The event was organized by Beth Stryker and Omar Nagati (Cluster) and supported by the Ford Foundation. Invited panelists represented two types of stakeholders in downtown: property owners (Karim Shafei, CEO of Al Ismaelia Real Estate Development, and Bruce Ferguson, Dean of the...
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Running the City: the making of Cairo's Marathon
Last month I featured Nabil Shawkat’s city walking group and the pleasures of exploring Cairo on foot. We pick up the pace this month with Cairo Runners who are gearing up for Cairo’s half marathon (22K) on May 10.
Last December Cairo Runners held their first run (4K) in Zamalek. Since then and until the recent hiatus in anticipation of the big event of the half marathon,...
April 2013
13 posts
2 tags
Borsa gets its own hyperlocal newspaper
Mantiqti is a free newspaper issued by Egypt Media Development Program (EMDP) dedicated to the Borsa area of downtown Cairo. Publisher Tarek Atia moved his office to the area nine months ago and quickly he and his staff became an integral part of the community, the neighborhood. “For some Borsa is the financial district with the stock exchange the central bank and the headquarters of the national...
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Reviewing the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival
The second edition of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF) kicked off earlier this month. The program lasting over three weeks includes performing arts, visual arts, music, film, edutainment and “urban visions,” a program of free contemporary dance and theater events in public spaces. Festival organizer Ahmed El Attar is clear about his intentions: “to highlight that public space is...
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Towards a revolutionary Nile front
بقلم علي عبد الرءوف
استاذ العمارة و نظريات العمران
مقدمة هذا المقال يناقش مفهوم الديمقراطية العمرانية في حقبة ما بعد ثورة 25 يناير ويربطها بقيمة الفراغ العام. ويستدعي المقال واحد من أهم أهداف الثورة وهو العدالة الاجتماعية ويربطها بتحقيق العدالة العمرانية، وأهمية الاستجابة لاحتياجات قطاعات عاشت لعقود في حالات من التهميش البين. وبصورة فاحصة فان المقال يستهدف حالة شاطئ النيل وخاصة في حدود...
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The Literary Atlas of Cairo: Navigating the City...
By Elisabeth Jaquette
The Literary Atlas of Cairo: One Hundred Years on the Streets of the City edited by Samia Mehrez. Cairo. The American University in Cairo Press. 2010.
“His heart had been snatched from him… where to? … He wanted to find someone to warm this small part of his chest, that little cage between the ribs, a small part that needed to be filled with tenderness. But can...
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C.Scapes by Maia Gusberti
C.SCAPES from maia gusberti on Vimeo.
By Maia Gusberti
C.Scapes emerged of my curiosity and will to understand more about a multi-faceted, highly controversial and contested public space in Cairo. It was realized between 2007 and 2009, when no one believed in the changes happening now since 2011, lots of them in public space.
I first came to Cairo as an artist in residence in 2006. The...
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SUMMER SCHOOL in CAIRO 15-26 June 2013: The...
A visible City: The tangible and intangible Heritage of Downtown Cairo
SUMMER SCHOOL in CAIRO 15-26 June 2013
APPLY NOW! until the 10th of May
IF YOU WANT TO… Get in touch with the real DOWNTOWN Discover (your) CAIRO Learn how to recognize a plan typology Learn about oral history methods Learn how to deal with interviews Eat the best chocolate dates in town Produce the first...
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Resident Perspective: Mukattam
Resident Perspective is a series of standardized interviews with Cairo residents to get their views on the city and their neighborhoods.
Where in Cairo do you live? Mokattam. It’s a great area though neglected by the government.
List the most positive and the most negative aspects of living there. Positive: Clean air (much less pollution than the rest of Cairo). Semi quite (though I...
4 tags
Book Review: Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian...
By Samah Selim
Mara Naaman, Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature: Portraits of Cairo. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
In January and February of 2011, Egyptians descended upon public squares throughout the country to bring an end to the thirty-year regime of Husni Mubarak. For those eighteen days—and on many other occasions throughout the following year—the people of Egypt...
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Is informality being disallowed by government?
The South African government continues to pursue efforts to ‘migrate’ informal enterprises to the formal sector. Andrew Charman, of Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, examines the impact of regulations and law enforcement on the ‘lived’ economy of informal micro-entrepreneurs.
South Africa’s economic policymakers have to confront the challenge of creating...
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Parallels Exhibition and Workshop
By Farah Shoukry
In the midst of Old Cairo, Darb 1718 hosted Module Designers’ Parallels exhibition and workshop. Parallels is the first workshop in a series to follow under the umbrella of Strawberry Fields Forever; an optimistic name for a developmental experimental project that aims to reach out to the community.
Yasser El Quessney, the principle architect and mastermind of Module...
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Lessons from elsewhere: Leipzig by Ali Alraouf
رباعية الرحلة والمدينة والساحة والحرية
د. علي عبد الرءوف
أستاذ العمارة والتصميم العمراني
ساحة اغوستس Augustus Platz، الساحة الرئيسية بالمدينة والتي تطل عليها جامعة لايبتزج.
من ميدان التحرير إلى ساحة اغوستس: ايام في “لايبتزج” مهد الثورة
اعتدت قبل سفري لمدينة جديدة من عالمنا المترامي ان الزم نفسي ببعض القراءات والعمل البحثي المحدود لتكوين فكرة عن المدينة واهم معالمها وتاريخها. هذه...
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Event: "AUB Neighbourhood Initiative" Lecture by...
مبادرة الحي للجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت
محاضرة أ/د: سينثيا مينتي الجامعة الأمريكية ببيروت
السبت 13 ابريل 2013 -الخامسة مساءً - كلية الهندسة جامعة عين شمس
في اطار مبادرة جامعة عين شمس لخدمة المجتمع وتنمية البيئة المحيطة.تنسيق قسم الهندسه المعمارية كليه الهندسةبالتعاون مع جمعية الفكر العمراني (مجاورة)
عن المحاضرة:
تم اطلاق مبادرة خدمة المجتمع و تنمية البيئة للجامعة الامريكية ببيروت في عام 2007...
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March 2013
13 posts
4 tags
Postcards from Revolutionary Cairo
By Jonathan Guyer
I was in Marrakesh two weeks ago, which is teeming with tourists of all stripes, decked out in tank tops and short shorts. Coming from Cairo, I found the swaths of high school groups, families pushing strollers, and long lines outside museums to be a bit of a shock. We don’t see these folks in Egypt anymore. The outside world’s perception of Cairo as a dangerous...
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Event: Learning from Cairo, April 12-14
Learning from Cairo seeks to engage the current political and urban transformation unfolding in Cairo as a critical context for examining relevant international case studies and best practices in areas ranging from housing, transportation, public space, and local governance to informality. Learning from Cairo emphasizes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach bringing practitioners,...
9 tags
Bulaq: the struggle over a neighborhood
كتب علي محمد احمد
هندسة عمارة- بوليتكنيكو دي ميلانو
لقاء مع نائب محافظ القاهره عقب قطع أهالى بولاق لطريق الكورنيش
رسائل
خرج أهالى مثلث” ماسبيرو” فى عدة وقفات أحتجاجيه حتى قاموا بقطع طريق الكورنيش فى أخر وقفه و ذلك بعد أستمرار تجاهل مطالبهم خلال الوقفات الأولى.
تقوم المحافظه بالتفاوض مع ملاك الأراضى ( المستثمرين ) لمحاولة أصدار قرار أستيلاء على جزء من الأرض لبناء 64 برج...
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Walking the city: an interview with Nabil Shawkat...
Walking is a fundamental part of experiencing the city. Until 1900, Cairo was a compact dense walkable city, by 1950 the city stretched out to the south, north-east and cross the Nile but it was also serviced with an extensive tram network and it was still a very walkable city. Besides simply being a means of getting from one point to another, walking can be a social experience, it can be...
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Ahram Online: Experts examine Egypt's informal...
Ahram Online’s Nada El-Kouny’s report on the one day workshop held last week at CEDEJ on informal urban development and government policies of evictions, among other related topics.
In an attempt to tackle the issue of informal housing in Egypt, primarily following the January 25 Revolution, a joint workshop initiative was held on Monday by the French Centre for Social, Judicial...
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Talk by Jason Hilgefort "Urban regeneration:...
Urban regeneration is natural and necessary, but given current development demands, an often nasty process. Referencing works in Turkey, India, Morocco, Cypress, etc; the discussion will focus on issues of cultural heritage, public space, policy, and dirty daily contemporary urban realities in search of alternative methods of operating.
Jason Hilgefort studied urbanism at The University of...
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Event: Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival, 4-28...
Press Release:
D-CAF is coming back to Downtown Cairo,
opening its doors to the public from 4-28 April 2013
Egyptian contemporary artists and performers will be joined by leading international names in a month-long calendar of independent music, performing arts, film, visual arts, street performances and workshops.
For information on D-CAF 2013 program please visit: www.d-caf.org
and d-caf blog:...
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Design Process- a project for Ard el Lewa
Cairobserver is looking to share architectural and urban designs by professionals and students.
This student work comes from Professor Nabil Elhady’s Public Buildings Studio at Cairo University. The aim of the studio is a reconsideration of public buildings in Egyptian cities and exploring the ways in which public buildings can have a positive contribution to the improvement of quality of...
3 tags
CURL: Introducing the Cairo Urban Resource Library
The Cairo Urban Resource Library is a project initiated by Omar Nagati and Beth Stryker (CLUSTER) and is supported by the British Council. The idea is simple: to create a publicly accessible architecture and urban studies library in a central location.
The library is located in the premises of CLUSTER, Cairo Laboratory for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research, at 43 Sherif Street,...
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900KM Nile City: grappling with Egypt's baffling...
From February 17 to March 6 the Townhouse Gallery hosted an exhibit titled 900KM Nile City, a project by Atelier Kempe Thill, baukuh, GRAU and edited by Moataz Faissal Farid and Pier Paolo Tamburelli.
The scale of the project is ambitious, it describes in text, video, maps, and photographs the narrow stretch of land from Aswan to Cairo where a series of settlements comprise a Nile City...
3 tags
Resident Perspective: Dokki
Resident Perspective is a series of standardized interviews with Cairo residents to get their views on the city and their neighborhoods.
Where in Cairo do you live? Dokki, like the rest of the country, covers a spectrum of contradictions, whether in regards to its architecture, its residences, or the governmental services or sidewalks.
List the most positive and the most negative aspects of...
3 tags
Event: Informal Areas after 25 January 2011
*scroll down for English
“المستقبل الحضرى المصرى: الجلسة الأولى، المناطق اللا رسمية بعد ثورة 25 يناير>
الورشة ستعزز من الحوار الفعال بين المؤسسات الحكومية والمجتمع المدنى والنشطاء والقطاع الخاص ومنظمات التنمية والباحثين وستعمل كذلك على فتح مجال للتعاون والتحالفات الإستراتيجية لبناء مستقبل حضرى مستدام فى مصر. الورشة من إعداد مركز الدراسات والوثائق الإقتصادية والقانونية والإجتماعية ...
3 tags
February 2013
10 posts
2 tags
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Concepts in city branding
بقلم: د. علي عبد الرءوف
أستاذ العمارة ونظريات العمران
“التركيبة السحرية لمذاق مشروب الكوكاكولا لم تكتشف بعد” كان هذا هو نص الخبر الذي تناقلته وكالات الإنباء العالمية بعد انتشار إشاعة الوصول الى سر التركيبة للمشروب الذي أسر العالم وغير مفاهيم الاقتصاد والإعلان ومخاطبة الجماهير والتسويق. المثير أن المشهد العمراني المحلي والإقليمي والعالمي المعاصر قد يرى فائدة كبرى في التعلم من...
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Destruction Alert: Villa Casdagli
On the first of February the long-abandoned and unused Villa Casdagli on Simon Bolivar Sq. was looted and its staircase was set on fire. The following day I visited the building after reading news that it was “burned to the ground” and found the fire department finishing its job in controlling the isolated fire. The building was standing strong but it had been stripped of any...
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mosques on the banknotes
[25 piasters from 1977 with Mahmoud Mukhtar’s Nahdet Masr sculpture]
As the value of the Egyptian pound continues to fall, it maybe a good time to take a close look at those one pound bills as they may disappear soon. Not long ago bills for fifty and twenty-five piasters were common in daily use, today such bills, if encountered, are kept for souvenir.
All the current bills from the 25...
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Destruction Alert: Villa Ispenian
Last month a historic villa from the early twentieth century with unique architectural eclecticism and which was filled with antiques and a rich art collection was looted and destroyed. Below is an article by Nevine El-Aref which first appeared on Al-Ahram Weekly on February 8, 2013.
Safe as houses? Not under the MSA
The luxuriously furnished villa of Kevork Ispenian on the Pyramids Road was...
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Muhammad Ali Street and the shifting symbolism of...
[the arcades in Muhammad Ali Street.]
By Joseph Ben Prestel
For many passers-by, the Southeastern edge of Ataba Square might be marked by the hustle and bustle from a myriad of shops selling electronic gear, household amenities, and other essential goods for everyday life. In this neighborhood with buildings packed densely next to each other, the view up Muhammad Ali Street is surprising. As...
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Resident Perspective: Madinet Nasr
Resident Perspective is a series of standardized interviews with Cairo residents to get their views on the city and their neighborhoods.
Where in Cairo do you live? I live in Nasr-City since 1990. A district of perpendicular grid of streets that has transformed in the past 20 years from a deserted district to a high dense district.
List the most positive and the most negative aspects of...
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The Revolution Added Two Years: On Cairo
By Frederick Deknatel
In Cairo, there is a street named after the Arab League. It’s a grand boulevard that cuts through Mohandiseen, a neighborhood built in the 1950s to house engineers and other civil servants, whose ranks swelled during the 1960s with the guarantee of employment under the state socialism of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. These days, the boulevard is lined with luxury car...
January 2013
14 posts
3 tags
Resident Perspective: El Obour
Resident Perspective is a series of standardized interviews with Cairo residents to get their views on the city and their neighborhoods.
Where in Cairo do you live? Madinet El Obour: Undeveloped, marginalized desert community, mostly non-gated areas. Has potential, but as every other Egyptian undertaking, is not thought out or planned to thrive.
List the most positive and the most negative...
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Egypt's forgotten builders: excerpt from 1961...
عمال البناء المنسيين
كتبت من فترة تدوينة عن عمال البناء المنسيين و كانت تلك التدوينة رد فعل لحوار مع مقاول تحدثت معه في الاسكندرية حيث كان يهدم بيت قديم من اربع ادوار ليبني مكانه عمارة لا تقل عن 12 دور. كان اهتمامي في بداية الامر له شقين: الاول الشق التراثي و الثاني هو تاثير تلك المباني العالية على البنية التحتية لمدن لم يتم اي تحديث او صيانة لبنيتها التحتية منث سنوات و ربما عقود. لكن المثير...
6 tags
The severed branches of local government
by Aaron Jakes
Sometime in the middle of last March, while I was still living in Cairo, I was working at my desk when I heard a noisy argument outside my window. The street in Zamalek where I lived was home to about a dozen little shops, along with a small café and a cafeteria, and I had long since learned to tune out the shouts and clamors that punctuated the busy working day outside. So I...
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Resident Perspective: Mohandeseen
Resident Perspective is a series of standardized interviews with Cairo residents to get their views on the city and their neighborhoods.
Where in Cairo do you live? By Gameat el-dowal Square in the heart of Mohandeseen.
List the most positive and the most negative aspects of living there. Positive: It is within central Cairo with easy access to Zamalek and Downtown. Gameat el-dowal street...
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Revolution, political transformation and urban...
[Initiative of cleaning the area’s entrance by young residents of neighboring districts in partnership with young residents from the area.]
Based on fieldwork conducted in March 2011, this article presents a snapshot view of the period immediately after the start of the revolution and how those events and political shifts affected the residents of one of Cairo’s ‘ashwa’eyat...
7 tags
Destruction Alert: Mohamed Ali Shubra Pavilion
One of the corners of the recently restored historic pavilion of Mohamed Ali in Shubra, has collapsed. A 55 million Egyptian Pound ($9 million) restoration took place 7 years ago and the building was “reopened” to much fanfare. In reality the “restoration” was a botched job using cheap materials (including low quality paint) and utilizing the services of contractors...
