#downtown cairo

[cats-of-cairo]

Gloomy afternoon, Bab el Sharia, Cairo.

[andrewshenouda]

DOWNTOWN CAIRO DETAILS

𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Downtown Cairo

𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱: 19th-20th Century

𝗣𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝘆: © Andrew Shenouda

[bauzeitgeist]

The U.S. Embassy in the Garden City diplomatic quarter of central Cairo. Standing out of the leafy, low-rise 19th-century enclave as a striking rather late example of the corporate brutalist style—although it is apparent that its fortress-like muscularity is as much a response to the U.S. State Department’s engineering requirements for blast resistance and radio wave impenetrability than any initial drive to explore concrete expressionism. The architect, Andre Houston of Washington D.C. firm Metcalf & Associates, authored only a handful of other public buildings, and this 1989 American Embassy addition proved to be the most high-profile commission of his career—he died in March, just a week before I visited this building. Despite his and his firm’s lack of previous practice in brutalism, the design takes what was surely even back then a challenging technical brief and accomplished something both bold and heroic in the best precedents of its tradition. Especially germane would arguably be I.M. Pei’s 1973 Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, with its powerful elevation of massive, recessed-grid windows, which have here been shaded, and also likely the sheltered voids of SOM’s astonishing National Commercial Bank at Jeddah, which had just been completed when this embassy was in its design stages. While SOM’s tower at Jeddah concerned itself with climate mitigation, and only obliquely incorporated Islamic motifs into its design by way of its triangular plan and trigonometric patterning, At first glance it appears that Houston (who had earlier worked in Teheran) engaged in a clumsy and overt Orientalism here, capping his handsome tower with a silly onion-dome belvedere, in the worst habits of lazy, ethnic pastiche. However, upon closer research it appears that the octagonal mechanical penthouse was originally installed without the tented polyurethane tarp—which was presumably added later to shield sensitive surveillance and communications equipment. Thus the degree to which this commendable brutalist block has been reduced to a clumsy faux-minaret was not the original intent, but a careless afterthought.

[cats-of-cairo]

Impressive Khedival building, downtown Cairo, Egypt. 

[cats-of-cairo]

Chaotic souq under Kobri al Azhar (arab. Al Azhar Bridge). 

Thousands of people are walking in all directions not minding the honking cars, buses and motorbikes which also trying to get through, the sellers are advertising their products by loudspeakers and the stink of rubbish, dust and traffic fumes is intertwined with the smell of baked potatoes, Ramadan sweets, spices and perfumes. My visit there left me a bit overwhelmed so I rewarded myself with a few little bottles of perfumes, their smell will now remind me of this adventure. 

[bauzeitgeist]

The fabulously pharaonic Bank Misr Tower, one of only a few tall commercial office buildings in central Cairo—a city which, for much of the 20th century, was dominated by foreign firms and colonial influence. In 1984, the first Egyptian-owned banking institution erected a modern expansion adjacent to its original 1927 6-story headquarters as a proud symbol of the economic liberalization of the post-Camp David Sadat era. The building is formulated in a tripartite, neoclassical arrangement of base, column and capital, rising from a commanding street-level podium, housing a banking hall, clad in red Egyptian granite cut from quarries owned by the bank, which then continues up the corners of the tower above, seeming to hold the office levels in a lithic frame, which angles inward at the shoulder, folding behind a dashing cantilevered visor of the same red stone. 

While broadly influenced by the postmodernism of the period, when concrete and glass was giving way to stone cladding, the statuesque arrangement of the building seems to reference archaeological figuration: the podium appears to guard the tower like a sphinx, its muscular pilasters almost suggesting a pair of outstretched paws, while the building’s angular crown is slightly reminiscent of a Pharaoh’s «nemes» headcloth with its lateral lappets. 

It may be somewhat surprising to learn that this stylistic effort is the work of Ove Arup, more renown for engineering experimentation than historicism expressionism. 

Special thanks to @cairobserver for the information in his excellent Cairo Architecture guidebook. Ove Arup, 1976-84. Photos March 2020 Bauzeitgeist. 

[bauzeitgeist]

A pair of somewhat surreptitious early-morning shots of Al-Mogamma (the complex”) the infamous landmark of Egypt’s sclerotic state bureaucracy, a 14-story Kafkaesque labyrinth of government offices where identity paperwork is obtained, permits are sought, documents are processed, authorizations are stamped and filed, connections are leaned on, bribes are paid. 

Built in the early 1950s in the last days of the old monarchy, in the decades hence it has only become more Byzantine, stuffing as many as 30,000 bureaucrats in a building meant for a fraction that much, its role symbolizing ordinary Egyptians relationship with their government has been portrayed in Egyptian film. There is near-constant rumor and speculation about its closure, dispersing the state’s administration to various, probably distant suburban facilities—indeed a New Cairo capital city is under construction 40kms east of the city center, but year after year Egyptian citizens are made to return to the same, huge old edifice to try to get through “the process.” Muhammad Kamal Ismail & Fahmy Momen, architects, completes 1951. Photos March 2020 Bauzeitgeist.

[cats-of-cairo]

A small walk through the downtown Cairo after work in the Museum. 

I especially enjoy the route Tahrir - Talaat Harb street - Attaba square. I think it is a nice and relatively easy way to admire the architecture of the downtown which is filled with beautiful neoclassical buildings, most of which remember the days of famous Khedive Ismail. They are a small reminder of his dream to create a new European inspired quarter in Cairo during the second half of the 19th century - Paris on the Nile. The dream is long gone and nowadays the downtown is an impressive combination of the European elements with typically Egyptian touch. 

After passing through the Talaat Harb square I turned right to the Abd el Khalik Tharwat street which is a great place to buy books of various kind. It led me to the Attaba square and once famous Gardens of Ezbekiyyeh. Attaba used to be a very fashionable place on the border of the European district of Khedive Ismail and the Ezbekiyyeh Gardens, designed in 1870s, were once considered among the finest gardens outside Europe. They once covered more than 20 acres, with exotic trees shading the pathways and an ornamental lake in the centre. 

Nowadays, the small space of greenery left is only a dusty shadow of its former glory. Just as with the garden, the old architecture around Attaba was demolished and it currently holds a huge marketplace where you can buy literary everything. The souq is like a spider and continues in all directions so all the streets are occupied by street vendors advertising their products. My personal favorite is the book market called “the University of the Poor” right next to the Garden.