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Some cities are crystallised in their particular physical form. In our minds we imagine and want them to remain forever unchanged. Others seem to reflect the society that inhabits them. They are places where form and significance exist in perfect synthesis. Then there are other cities whose physical form is simply unable to contain the constant transformations of its urban fabric. It’s as if their galloping metabolism turned over too fast for the city structures to keep up. Cairo is one such place. Here action outstrips the outward form; here constant invention, the half finished and the imperfect are all part of a constructive process that makes any formal definition outdated the minute it is coined.
The underlying catalyst for the teeming swirl of activities that make up Cairo’s everyday existence is its extraordinary population density.
Tightly packed houses, things, people, noise and heat is the first impression the visitor gets. It hits you like a visual and physical shock. Incessant activity everywhere and always. Discarded commodities are reassembled into new products, given new names and sold on. It is part of a whole different attitude to life and living in public spaces, which by osmosis get turned into private spaces, and in turn change the physical face of the megalopolis itself. The phenomenon is well-known. It has attracted attention and prompted much research into how the urban environment is shaped by such widespread recycling activities. These so-called “repairing cities” have entire quarters where recycled objects - from cars to mobile phones - are prepared, reassembled and resold. In Zabaleen Village in the heart of the poor neighbourhood of Mansheya, inhabited by 50,000 orthodox Copts, the main activity is the collection and recycling of garbage.
As well as the symbolic theatre of the Egyptian Arab Spring, the populous revolution that got under way on 25th January 2011 and brought about the downfall of...
Digital
Printed
Constellation of Architecture Practice
Toshiko Mori Architect
The world in which we live is dynamic and constantly shifts through divergent modes of production, expression and engagements. It is no longer suffici...
Cairo Mapping: The International City of The Pharaohs
Cairo is the sixth city to be examined after Dublin, Milan, New York, Guadalajara and Istanbul.An age-old international crossroads, this extraordinary...
Skyhouse, New York, USA
David Hotson Architect
As you exit the elevator into the vestibule of the Skyhouse, you realize, in an instant, that you have entered an extraordinary architectural construc...
