“Who has not seen Cairo has not seen the world.
Her dust is gold and her Nile a wonder;
her women are beauties and her houses palaces:
her air is temperate and the fragrance of her breezes outvies the scent of aloes-wood:
and how should it be otherwise, being the mother of the world?
Collection Arabic narrations, 11th - 12th century
FIRST SEMINAR
Analysis and design planning research
SECOND SEMINAR
Excursions and local research field
Half of the population in the Cairo area lives in so-called informal (unplanned), underserved and extremely densely populated neighborhoods. Not only lives the poor population, but increasingly also a young middle class in these informal settlements. At the same time, thousands of ready-to-move apartments in formal plant districts are still empty in Cairo. These city quarters, most of which are located in the deserts, have been designed and built according to the concepts and architectural design of the European climate. The principles of traditional urban planning and the construction methods and techniques developed over a thousand years in this dry climate zone have mostly been ignored. As a rule, there are hardly any differences in the construction quality between the formal and the informal districts of the city.
During the seminar, specific contemporary and spontaneous (unplanned) urban structures as well as public housing projects in Cairo were selected and analyzed.
The process of informal building with its fast and very efficient adaptability to all kind of conditions was vital during the field research. The informal process appears at first as unorganized, but ultimately leads to results similar to those of the growth of a traditional oriental city.
With a high building density, minimal public space and a small traffic area, the "EL Ashwaiat" (in English the spontaneous ones), follow the design principles of the historically grown oriental city quarters.
Project during the teaching post at the Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany (D. Karcher)
Collaboration partners
Architecture Department, Helwan University Cairo, Egypt
El Shorouk Akademie Cairo, Egypt
Wolfgang Altenburg, Egyptian Earth Construction Association, Cairo, Egypt
GIZ GmbH Cairo, Egypt
Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center, Egypt
