Students: Mélanie Jeannet, Nathalie Schuemperlin
Location: Cairo
Date: October, 2010
Type: Research project, student work

What is today known as Islamic Cairo’s medievalization already began in the late 1800s when the accelerated modernization of the city on the occasion of the Suez Canal’s opening alarmed those (mostly Europeans) who romanticized the winding Oriental cul-de-sacs of the old city.  Today, the Bayn al-Qasrayn, which was already the processional artery of Mamluk Cairo along which the architectural monuments accumulated –known for an urban consciousness in the adjstment of their street-orientated facades –is the spine of cultural heritage, a clean, tourist-friendly route down the center of the urban fabric.  Beyond the spine, however, are informal additions built by lower-income residents in the midst of dilapidating buildings of various historic values.  

It will also be necessary to understand the fundamental structures of pre-modern Cairo, as exemplary of an Islamic city, such as the socio-economic typologies of the masjid, madrassa, wakala (also known as khan or caravanserai), hammam, kuttab-sabils, the residential typology of the raaba, their relation to the waqf, and their typological/formal, functional and programmatic transformations with the onset of modernity.

This topic will not only look preservation since the 1900s, such as the reconstruction of Bab Zuwayla area or the contemporary restoration of Beit Suheimi, but also at the relationship, if any, to the integration into global capital since IMF’s request for Egypt to restructure in 1990 and its ensuing consequences on heritage.  It will also look at the adjacencies of poverty to this very same heritage value and the reality and rhetoric which shape the upgrading of the areas such as the Darb al Ahmar.   Global agencies as diverse as the Agha Khan Program or USAID have intervened and produced as diverse projects as the Azhar Park or the upgrade and commercialization of the Khan al Ghuri.  The Azhar Park also touches on the historicity of water and leisure for historical Cairo, which will overlap in its confined scope with the topic dealing with the “Islands of the Nile”.  The conjunction of heritage with informality continues the spectrum of thought for the first 4 topics of investigation for the studio.