5 - 11 July 2001
Issue No.541
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 5 - 11 July 2001 Issue No.541 |
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The setting of sun city
The students of the University of Helwan's Faculty of Fine Arts are mourning the fate of Heliopolis. Fayza Hassan attends a commemoration
Baron Edouard Empain, Belgian banker and businessman extraordinaire, had already changed the market for European public transport and the production and distribution of electricity when he visited Egypt. At the time of his arrival, 1905, the price of the square metre in certain chic quarters of Cairo was higher than comparable sites in London or Paris. The baron realised at once that the possibilities for real estate speculation were enormous, and that he was lucky to find himself in a position to take advantage of the building boom.
From top: the way it used to be; vulgar billboards and the garish Horreya Mall are but a few eyesores of Heliopolis 2000
Quietly, he purchased a piece of the Abbasiya desert, a stretch of land that was coveted by neither the French nor the British, and was therefore rather inexpensive. He then established a joint stock company, the Cairo Electric Railways and Heliopolis Oases Company, with administrative offices in Brussels and registered offices in Cairo, at the Shepheard's Hotel.
In an article entitled "Ernest Jaspar à Héliopolis" (in Le Caire-Alexandrie, Architectures Européennes, 1850-1950, Mercedes Volait, ed., IFAO/CEDEJ, 2001) Anne Van Loo expresses surprise at the fact that an industrialist of Empain's stature felt the need to legitimise his project with historical connotations to make it more attractive. In fact, he was interested in archaeology and must have believed honestly that he had bought the land on which the ancient Heliopolis had stood in antiquity. He therefore ordered excavations on the site, hoping to find remains of the ancient City of the Sun. But, writes Van Loo, the old Heliopolis was closer to the Nile, south of the Delta; the search did not yield any ruins. Nevertheless, Empain proceeded with his project, considered until today a model of urbanism: the project was designed to include several built oases away from the pollution of the city proper. The furthest point to the centre included villas and palaces for Cairo's wealthy and cosmopolitan population as well as a luxury hotel equal to Europe's most prestigious establishments: the Heliopolis Palace. As one moved away from the desert and closer to Cairo, other oases, separated by large strips of wilderness later to be planted, were destined to house the business district and inhabitants living on a more restricted budget.
To build his dream hotel, Empain hired Ernest Jaspar, a relatively unknown 28-year- old Belgian architect. The building contract was attributed to Leon Rollin et Cie, a Belgian company already well established in Egypt, and the interior decoration to Alexandre Marcel and his chief decorator, Georges-Louis Claude. This team, with the addition of the only Egyptian architect, Habib Ayrout, was eventually responsible for the planning and building of the entire suburb.
Once the splendid palace-hotel was completed, a new layout for the area emerged naturally, described by Van Loo as including a circular oasis of opulent villas surrounding the Heliopolis Palace, which was linked by a large tree-lined avenue and a metro line to a second, more "popular," oasis. Halfway in between, the celebrated Basilica (dedicated by Empain to Our Lady of Tongres, in memory of his native town) soon became one of the great landmarks of the new "garden city."
Jaspar and his family left Egypt on the eve of the first World War, when Heliopolis's population had just reached the 7,000 mark. It had increased to 20,000 in 1925, but as long as the Heliopolis Company controlled the expansion, the layout and the style of the additional buildings were fully respected, to the point where it was hard to tell an original Jaspar edifice from a building erected in later years.
After the 1952 Revolution, and particularly in the past two decades, things changed drastically as the demographic problem hit Heliopolis like any other suburb of Cairo. Construction regulations were shelved in favour of giving a free hand to ambitious and unscrupulous developers. Buildings sprouted everywhere with no control over the site, the style, or the quality of workmanship. The original subdued cream, ochre and beige façades were replaced by a bizarre colour scheme in which blue, mauve and bright orange prevail. Cheap window metal frames became all the rage, as the elegant French bay windows of times gone by fell under the wrecking ball of the demolishers; the old villas were transformed and disfigured to accommodate offices and commercial outfits.
This sad state of affairs was verified very effectively by a short video documentary recently presented by fourth-year architecture students from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Helwan, under the supervision of Professor Yehia El-Zeidi during a conference at the Greater Cairo Library. The audience was treated to perspective after perspective of shoddily constructed high-rises flanking princely villas in various states of disrepair, billboards disfiguring the original art deco constructions, broken arches in the once gracious office buildings of the Heliopolis company, green spaces transformed into garbage dumps... A heavy cloud of smog hung over the mushrooming slum, increased daily by the extremely heavy traffic slowly choking the inhabitants of old and new buildings alike. An aerial view of Heliopolis showed, instead of the original neat layout, an incredible jumble of garishly painted buildings, constructed without the slightest attention to the most elementary principles of sound urban development. The lovingly planned city of Heliopolis has all but disappeared under the onslaught of unqualified developers whose only concern is a quick return on their financial outlay.
It was therefore quite refreshing to discover at this conference that a new generation of budding architects is aware of the urban disaster that has befallen the large Egyptian cities. The question is, will they be in time to stop the annihilation of every beautiful building and begin creating a new style in tune with our past architectural tradition and reputation, or will they be overtaken by the general apathy in confronting the problem and give in to the attraction of speedy profits?
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