A financial citadel

A massive construction site along Salah Salem Road, just below the Citadel, has been sitting idle for a couple of years now. The construction competes with the Citadel in a battle over size and visibility. The stalled constrcution is the Cairo Financial Center, a project that aimed to create a financial and touristic hub where the stock market would be relocated from its downtown location. Major banks were also to have headquarters in the complex. It appears the design had gone through several itirations due to pressure by UNESCO and Cairo’s heritage activists. The Citadel is a world heritage site and the massive constuction would have threatened to take the site off the heritage list as well as obstruct views and radically transform (read uglify) the location.

Here are some facts about the project from Emporis.com:

·       The layout of the project broadly resembles the figure “8” with eight conjoined office buildings forming the two cores and the hotel building at their intersection.

·       The 8 office towers will total a gross building area of 280.000 square meters.

·       The 400-room 5 star hotel will be elevated on two columns 15 meters high with a span of 80 meters above the two inner courtyards.

·       CFC will include 50.000 square meters of retail space and a 10,900 square meter exhibition center.

·       222,000 square meters of underground parking.

·       The CFC will also house the new 10,000 square meter Egyptian Stock Exchange.

According to Skyscraper City the project is to include a shopping mall and a 16-screen cinema. Saladin’s Citadel and Muhammad Ali’s Mosque will have to compete with a multi-plex and a mall.

Although a massive concrete structure has been built on site amid the controversy, it is unclear which design is being implemented. The project had undergone through various designs, specifically two publicized variations, both of which look like 1980s student designs. Perhaps the very concept of the project was already doomed. As cities around the world, particularly in the West, are rediscovering their urban centers and aiming to rejuvinate them, the planners of the project seem stuck in a 1970s planning mindset.

The changes done to the two designs are shallow facade treatments. The building structure which seems to arbitrarily make twists and turns does not attempt to be contextual in its form (nor its function). Contextual design doesn’t mean changing elevations from glass and steel to rough-cut stone or adding some pointed arches. This project is a-contextual in every way and there is no turning back.

In September 2007, Al-Ahram Weekly reported on the project regarding its infringement on a heritage zone:

After four months of wrangling, plans for the 26,000 square metre Cairo Financial and Tourist Centre (CFTC), located next to the citadel, will now be redrawn. Since plans for the CFTC were first unveiled in February 2006 the development has been the focus of controversy, with the Ministry of Culture, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and archaeologists ranged against the developers, ALKAN Holding Company (AHC), and its Chairman Mohamed Nosseir.

Work on CFTC began in 2006 without the permission of the SCA’s Permanent Committee for Islamic and Coptic Antiquities, which had twice refused to license development of the site, first in 2001 and again in 2005. The proposed scheme, said the SCA, constituted an encroachment on the citadel complex and violated Antiquities Law 117/1983.

Read full article, here.

In June 2008 Daily News Egypt reported on the involvement of a US firm to redesign the project and give it a context-friendly appearance:

Accordingly, a bidding competition began whereby five architectural companies submitted designs for the CFC. Finally, in December 2006, OLC — a US consulting firm based in Denver — won the competition and is now serving as the architect of record on the design of the CFC.

“The idea behind the competition was to come up with a design that complies with the UNESCO’s requirements that [necessitate] preserving the historic nature of the site and [does not block] the view of the Citadel or Mohamed Ali Mosque…to tourists coming from Salah Salem Street,” El Sheikh explained.

Not only does the OLC design not obscure the historic view, El Sheikh added, it also blends in with the Mokktam Hill rise in terms of gradual stepping of the site’s height.

“To address design constraints imposed by its proximity to historic Cairo and to avoid competing with or imposing upon the nearby Citadel, OLC used the context of the Mokattam Hill surrounding the location as inspiration for the facility’s design,” he pointed out.

“The project will blend into the hill with a stepping approach that also allows unobstructed views of the historic scenery.”

Read full article, here.

The current status of the project is shrowded in mystery but the very existance of this abandoned massive concrete structure in such location, an unfinished eyesore and an unwanted intervention, raises questions about the legal processes for building in Egypt. How did such project get official approval and how can it simply change design after approval and who has the right to sell land within a heritage zone? And How can the public be left in the dark? Many more questions and observations can be made, but the readers can make their own.