Demystifying ʿAshwaʾiyyat:

A Critique of the Discourse around Cairene Urban Informality (PhD Research)

Sixty to seventy percent of the Cairene population is said to live in informal areas, known by the name ʿashwaʾiyyat, putting Cairo at the heart of urban literature on informality. However, urban research has focused only on informal spaces linked with poverty, lack of modern infrastructure, and state intervention, overlooking a local narrative by different city stakeholders in which other urban forms are also considered ʿashwaʾiyyat. Accordingly, this research investigates this alternative perspective by exploring other possible typologies and classifications of ʿashwaʾiyyat, which could be used to deepen understanding of urban informality in Cairo and beyond. 
Studies of informal practices have generally privileged state-led definitions of what is and is not considered informal; something immediately problematised in Cairo as thousands of people are threatened to be displaced, and hundreds of valuable and historic buildings are put at risk of demolition. The research, therefore, challenges these state-led definitions by revealing the distinctive characteristics of ʿashwaʾiyyat that lie beyond what the Egyptian state ‘sees’ as informal. 
The research builds its argument based on the author’s first-hand experience and knowledge of the city, combined with primary and secondary sources, which indicate alternative realities of urban informality on the ground. The study employs mixed archival and fieldwork methods to unpack the broad understanding of Cairene urban informality. These methods generate a range of textual and visual data that question the logic of how urban informality is taught and implemented in the planning and management of Cairo. Archives of the state-sponsored press, TV and film industry are examined, and questions regarding architectural and urban pedagogy in Egypt and the public’s understanding of urban informality are discussed. The spatial, aesthetic, and urban manifestations of ʿashwaʾiyyat in Cairo are researched and analysed, deciphering an underexplored facet of the city’s urbanity.

Influence of Post-Renaissance Ideology on Egyptian Post-Traditional Architecture:

A Case Study of Cairene Islamic Religious Buildings (Master’s Research)

The research deals with the architecture of Egyptian society in the post-traditional period. The French campaign in Egypt sparked a paradigm that generated a belief in European cultural superiority. Hence, what was later dictated by 'the West' in particular aspects, including architectural practice, was ubiquitously absorbed by Egyptian practitioners and architectural specialists. Out of this context, traditional architecture has been reshaped and re-introduced to Egyptians through a deformed colonial perspective. This has generated an Egyptian worldview devoid of traditional architectural principles, and instead, architecture became a mere form of stylistic manipulation. Since Egyptians only witnessed the aftermath of the post-Renaissance period and did not experience the Renaissance itself, the process of Westernising Egypt has left us with an architectural discourse devoid of conceptual meanings and unified language.
This thesis showcases how the model of colonising Egypt and its society has catalysed the deformity within Egypt’s architectural discourse. It hypothesises that if the present day’s deformity within Egyptian discourse of architecture had been catalysed by the post-Renaissance ideology, then contemporary Egyptian architecture is generated through a post-traditional worldview devoid of a meaningful theoretical background. This research is divided into three main parts; the first deals with the process of uprooting tradition in Western society, the second introduces notions of transformations within Egyptian society after the French campaign, and the third is the application to the theory of the research within a framework of analysis.
Supervisor: Prof. Aly H. Gabr
Architecture Department at the University of Cairo
Image: The mihrāb of the Mosque-Madrasah of Sultan Hassan, Omar Abolnaga, 2020.