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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Abdel-Halim Ibrahim Abdel-Halim:
Community ceremonies
Profile by Fayza HassanIf the gate is closed -- why, just push it open
The first time I interviewed architect Abdel-Halim Ibrahim Abdel-Halim, I was prepared to dislike him. I was doing a story on the Sayeda Zeinab Cultural Garden, which he had designed and established on the site of a wasteland and garbage dump behind the celebrated mosque. It had been completed and officially opened, and he had received the prestigious Agha Khan Award in 1995 for the project. His offices, on Abul-Dahab Street -- a short pedestrian alley remodeled to accommodate traditional craftsmen's shops as part of the cultural experience -- directly overlook the garden: a good opportunity, we thought, to take some interesting photographs of men at work and children at play before our scheduled appointment.
After the din of the crowded neighbourhood, the quaint, newly paved little lane was surprisingly quiet and deserted. Some erstwhile mechanics' workshops appeared to be undergoing a lackadaisical process of transformation, while others were simply shuttered. Through openings in the high walls and the numerous bolted gates protecting the garden, we managed to observe a forest of royal palm trees towering over several low, white-domed buildings, bordering mysteriously winding alleys. There was not a soul in sight. The place was obviously closed to the public, although we had repeatedly been told that the whole scheme was originally conceived as a community project intended to improve the quality of life in this underprivileged and overpopulated part of town. Questions addressed to the garden's caretaker yielded no clear explanations and certainly opened no gates. When, producing our credentials, we insisted on gaining access, we were finally told that important sheikhs were buried under the domes and that it was sinful to take pictures.
Defeated, we eventually climbed the winding steps to Abdel-Halim's busy offices. We were seething, and even the special quality of the light pouring through the large windows overlooking the garden did not calm our anger. Barely taking time to introduce myself and photographer Randa Shaath, as soon as Abdel-Halim appeared in the doorway, I asked him petulantly if he was aware of the fact that his culture garden was not dispensing culture in any form or shape. Was he not responsible for the project? The children of the quarter now had neither a garden nor the wasteland to play in, I said accusingly. He nodded and smiled, apparently unconcerned. "Isn't it typical," he said, in what I considered a non sequitur, "that so many Egyptians associate our indigenous architecture with funerary monuments?"
We were seated around a large table, and he quietly started to explain the garden and the administrative problems leading to its temporary closure. This was when I noticed his hands. Artist's hands, I thought at once, unabashed by the cliché, long and slim, yet strong somehow, with perfect fingers gently tapering at the tip. The nails were very short and almost square. Abdel-Halim moved his hands sparingly, and only to underline a point of particular interest. I soon forgot my rage and began listening attentively. Observing him, I discovered that day what I came to consider later as one of his most endearing traits: he was totally unselfconscious. His words were simple but never patronising. He neither boasted nor embarrassed with false modesty. Over the years, I bumped into him at every serious conference featuring community development projects. He never lingered once he had delivered his paper. He came and went unobtrusively, a busy man who had little time for idle show or chitchat.
Last week, we met at the new plastic art museum on the Cairo Opera House grounds, his latest grand'oeuvre. He gave me a complete guided tour of the building, explaining the relation between the clear marble floors and the stark white walls, the large halls and adjoining glassed-in nooks overlooking the grounds, "where people can rest their eyes from all this artistry on some greenery." He pointed to the skylights from which sunlight poured, to a few "clever corners" sheltering a couple of chairs or some potted plants ("the architect's gift," he remarked), and to the different levels from which the various displays could be seen at the same time. "In a museum, one should be able to contemplate in solitude yet feel part of the community at the same time," he commented. We walked up and down short flights of stairs, noticing the sharp angles, the large expanses of pure white, the quantity of glass and the exposed pipes housing the electricity and air-conditioning cables. The place had a definite modern look, but, turning a corner, we were confronted with the muted tones of a stone wall, an unexpected space in the shape of a glass-domed gazebo, a concealed corridor or "secret passage", a gently rounded arch, a heavy wooden door featuring Islamic designs, all clear intimations of the culture and the people for whom the museum was designed in the first place. "We did not tear down the old palace, but worked around the main hall and integrated it into our design, hence the curved arches," explained Abdel-Halim. The palace was built by renowned architect Mustafa Fahmi in 1920, "and it had beautiful proportions. I could not bring myself to erase it completely."
"Culture Garden in Sayeda Zeinab
photo: Aref Saad El-Din
A number of workers were in the process of erecting a partition; the noise from their drill was ear-shattering and, once again, like that day in Sayeda Zeinab, we were confronted with many closed doors. In both cases, Abdel-Halim remained outwardly calm and composed, controlling whatever annoyance he must have felt. I wanted him to shout abuse at the offenders. Was this not his building? Instead, he acted like the casual visitor who finds himself slightly inconvenienced and inquires politely if there is an easy remedy to the situation. Other things displease him too, he admitted lightly, such as the incongruous colour of certain glass panels, chosen against his advice, for instance, and the present bareness of the once lush rubber trees which have been given a rather drastic trim... "I wanted large windows so that people could enjoy the trees," he murmured regretfully, almost to himself, then shrugged: "It is only by people's willingness to appropriate the space that I can tell if I have achieved my aim," he commented. "This is their place now."
I wondered if he felt like the doctor who attends to the birth of a child but has no control over his future. Before I could ask, he began to explain that buildings and the communities in which they are implanted are interrelated. He talked about the mock-ups which usually precede the implementation of his projects, calling them community ceremonies: "We did that for the Sayeda Zeinab garden," he pointed out. "We called a meeting of the inhabitants of the quarter and asked them what they thought they needed, what they wanted to see in the garden. They told us, and we drew circles on the ground of the site, one for the library and others for the playground and the rest area, etc. We gave the children who were watching cardboard sheets and paint and asked them to erect mock buildings, then we watched the people move around. We noted the areas of concentration and the flow of traffic and this gave us invaluable information as to the kind of garden we should build."
Emphasising once more that he builds primarily for community enjoyment, Abdel-Halim has provided the plastic art museum with a cafeteria overlooking the display halls, several comfortable lounges, a well-stocked art library, a state-of-the-art projection room and large offices for the staff. According to him, if a building serves its intended users well, then it is a good building.
Long ago, on 9 June 1967, as a young university student, Abdel-Halim took part, with thousands of Egyptians, in the huge demonstration immediately following Abdel-Nasser's resignation speech. Like them, he was shattered by the defeat; like them, he was totally committed to averting a greater catastrophe. As they marched through the streets chanting their slogans, he was struck by the extraordinary energy emanating from the crowd. Their world had been turned upside down, but together they represented an immense power. The people are everything, he thought. At that very moment, he says, this realisation completely changed his outlook of the profession he was about to embrace.
It can be argued that Abdel-Halim's ideas about the interrelation of community and architecture were promoted by more than the fated date of 9 June. Long before his birth, his paternal grandfather, a Jesuit graduate, was recommended to Mr Sornaga -- an Italian who had arrived in Alexandria with the intention of establishing his business in Egypt -- to act as translator during a boat expedition along the Nile, in search of the perfect clay to manufacture refractory bricks and decorative ceramics. Many samples were tested and, eventually, the shores of Al-Saff in Giza were selected. Arrangements were made with the village head, Sheikh Mohieddin -- who would later become Abdel-Halim's maternal grandfather -- to build a factory according to Mr Sornaga's specifications. Soon recruitment of traditional craftsmen was underway in the adjoining villages and an array of qualified artists, draftsmen, calligraphers and technicians flocked to Al-Saff from all over. Several decades later, Abdel-Halim was born, and grew up on the grounds of the prosperous factory at the heart of a close-knit artistic community.
His father, who had received no formal schooling but had picked up many languages and skills through his daily contacts with the versatile group, wished him to become a chemical engineer who would command great authority at the factory. Abdel-Halim went to school in Helwan and, encouraged by an artistic mother, developed an interest in various disciplines. He was not opposed in principle to his father's scheme, and though he toyed sometimes with the idea of becoming a writer, he enrolled nevertheless at the school of engineering. Still he was not sure that he wanted to master the delicate science of mixing clay to produce the perfect brick, and one day decided to quiz his professor, Mustafa El-Shafei. "You come here to discover what you like," El-Shafei told him. "If you can discover it, and if, furthermore, you can make it your profession then you are a lucky man."
"Qa'et Al-Nil, the new art gallery on the Cairo Opera House grounds
photo: Khaled El-Fiqi
Abdel-Halim thought about what he had been told and decided that he wished to be a lucky man. Consequently, he informed his father that he was going to become an architect. The father took Abdel-Halim's change of heart in his stride: times were changing, and the revolution which had fired the son's imagination with the desire to build for a new, free Egypt, was snuffing out the artistic current at the Sornaga factory. Many members of the community were leaving and eventually the factory was nationalised. Abdel-Halim's father chose to stay, but things were never the same.
Immediately after graduation, Abdel-Halim was posted to the recently opened university of Assiut, where he was asked to start teaching as soon as he arrived. "I was barely in my '20s, facing students almost my age. I had to remind myself constantly that I was the one in control," he commented. It all went well, however: he fell in love with the city, and really did not mind the job. Back in Cairo two years later, he felt alienated by the atmosphere at the university. He decided to apply for a scholarship in the United States. The 1967 War and the subsequent debacle stopped him short. "I was absolutely broken, I could not believe that it was happening, I felt sick, I was unable to work. I had to rethink my life, my ideas...The world around me was crumbling and I could not hold it together."
After his experience of 9 June however, he felt revitalised. He decided to accept the scholarship at the University of Oregon provided they would let him change his proposal. There was no more room for idle aesthetic considerations in his mind; he wanted to study the role of architecture in community development and learn about relations between buildings and people. He carried over these preoccupations to the University of California at Berkeley, where he went to further his studies and whence he emerged with a clear image of what his role was going to be. On his return, he was ready to work. He had soon expanded his activities all over the Arab world, where the building of hospitals, schools, universities, community and medical centres afforded him a chance to successfully apply his ideas.
At a recent international conference sponsored by the University of California at Berkeley, his alma mater, he stood firmly against the globalisation of architecture, arguing that it was "detrimental to the production of good architecture on three fundamental levels: quality and meaning, community setting and empowerment, and cultural values in the context in which buildings are produced and used". The remedy to the disastrous trend of globalisation, he stressed, was in the active promotion of community-based approaches.
For many, 9 June 1967 is just a faint memory, but, oblivious to those who dropped out, Abdel-Halim, who firmly believes in the ability of the younger generations to take over and steer the boat in the right direction, continues to march on.
