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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Special Travel Sports People Features Living Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The people of the city
By Fayza Hassan
On this clear April morning in the lobby of the small theatre of the Opera House, foreign and Egyptian architects were preparing to attend the opening of a two-day conference organised by the Union of Egyptian Architects. Old friends and associates, all members of the profession, were already heatedly discussing the main issues to be presented at the conference. It soon became evident that many felt the variety of problems threatening the urban fabric required drastic remedies. Bearing in mind the positive attitude of the participants, the final recommendations came as an anti-climax: they simply reiterated the basic principles of sound development and preservation of the Egyptian heritage, but fell short of resolving any specific problem. It was really too little, too late.
"We are not starting from scratch: in old cities we are forced to work with the reality on the ground," said architect Ahmed Hamid. "Mistakes were made in the past which cannot be undone. There is no point crying over spilt milk and dreaming about ideal conditions."
Today's urban planners and architects have inherited a long tradition of misguided urban development, starting from Mohamed Ali's attacks on priceless monuments (he used the stones in the construction of his factories) to the ill-planned Westernisation schemes of Khedive Ismail and the socialist-inspired construction drive of the '50s and '60s. The '80s witnessed an unprecedented growth of the urban population, leading to an unsightly vertical extension of the main cities, which also taxed the existing amenities to over-capacity. With a failing infrastructure and the scarcity of land commanding astronomical prices, professionals can only hope to provide Band-Aid solutions.
The preservation of monuments and landmarks is no less problematic. For centuries, mosques, palaces and sabils were ruthlessly knocked down, truncated and reappropriated by successive rulers, then abandoned to informal dwellers who settled in and around them. Rising ground water and the accumulation of garbage produced by an ever-growing population have compounded the damage.
Dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of this urban débacle, many participants in the conference have chosen to look at one tree at a time and forget about the forest; they have thus turned their attention to discrete issues, rather than attempting to offer comprehensive solutions.
Half in jest, in his opening speech, Cairo Governor Abdel-Rehim Shehata presented several photos of hideous expansions added to existing buildings and disfiguring the skyline of the capital, laying the blame on the architects responsible for such monstrosities. "But," quipped one of the participants, "it is the governorate that issues the permits for those extra storeys." Shehata also mentioned the introduction of an aggressive drive to regulate the use of advertising panels and professional plaques which contribute largely to the unkempt aspect of the downtown area, as well as an attempt to impose a uniform and more reserved colour scheme for façades -- undoubtedly a veiled allusion to the new fashion of dressing stately buildings in candy hues of pink, baby blue, canary yellow and mauve.
Suha Okzan, secretary-general of the Agha Khan Award for Architecture, explained the functions of the Agha Khan Trust for Culture and outlined some of the award-winning projects, while town planner Stefano Bianca discussed the project of the Al-Darrassa Garden, which is part of the greater plan to preserve Fatimid Cairo. Among the various papers contributed by the participants were those of Maissa Mahmoud and Dalila El-Kerdani, who offered a number of creative suggestions for the improvement of the built environment in Zamalek, while Sahar Attia concentrated on the problems faced by the neglected quarter of Abbassiya and Alexandrian architect Mohamed Awad presented a study on the European architectural heritage of Alexandria.
Several papers concerned strategies of preservation and conservation: architect Salah Zaki recounted the success story of the restoration of Beit Sukkar -- part of the Egyptian-German Darb Qirmiz project -- which was completed by its inhabitants with a small loan from the cultural section of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The aim of this project was to revitalise the historical quarters and to encourage owners of buildings adjacent to monuments to repair and maintain their own dwellings. In the case of Beit Sukkar, the experiment was limited by such factors as lack of funding to improve the infrastructure and the creation of incentives to stimulate tenants to repair buildings they do not own. Still in the framework of the Darb Qirmiz project, Nairi Hampikian of the German Institute of Archeology talked about the problems of restoration in Fatimid Cairo and presented as a case study the restoration of Al-Saleh Nejm Al-Din Ayyoub's mausoleum, which she has now completed. Ass'ad Nadim shared his experience in restoring Beit Al-Suhaymi and its environs, while a number of architects called for creative thinking to be applied in the adaptive reuse of monuments.
Sawsan Nuweir presented the work of the students of the Versailles School of Architecture, who have been working under her direction to find workable solutions for the preservation of Fatimid Cairo, but her presentation was hampered by the lack of facilities. She was therefore unable to show the detailed maps of the area which are the fruit of three years of painstaking work. Galila El-Qadi of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique presented a paper on the evolution of the meaning and assessment of architectural landmarks, and concluded by remarking pointedly that, while the participants all agreed on the need to prevent owners/occupants of buildings endowed with historical significance from altering them in any way, a permit had recently been issued to build an extra storey on the roof of the French Consulate downtown.
Although most of the presentations had been already heard at other conferences and no fresh input was contributed to revitalise the proceedings, a positive note was finally struck when the participants agreed unanimously that restoration/preservation should be carried out with the cooperation of the area's inhabitants, not against their will. The people are an integral part of the city, and any scheme which provides for their displacement is doomed to failure -- such, perhaps, was the most precious bit of wisdom offered to the gathering.
photo: Khaled El-Fiqi
