Gamal: The Pub’s Child

Written by the team of Tara el Bahr

As you enter “Spitfire” pub at night, you find Gamal behind the bar in a shirt and jeans. He smokes his molasses scented tobacco on a water pipe that is delivered from the nearby café. In between puffs he opens beer bottles for his clients.

Gamal tells me that he came to work with his uncle forty years ago. He says “My uncle opened this pub and he is the one who called it “Spitfire” after World War II. I owe everything to my uncle’s benevolence”

Being actually brought up by his uncle, Gamal loved him and was more affected by him then by his own father. He entered the pub forty years ago and was never away from it except for eight years due to some disagreements. During these years he was a supplier of alcohol to artists, politicians and public figures. He also worked and still works in preparing the traditional fermented fish at home and selling it through the pub and other means.

Gamal says that through this small pub, Spitfire, he was able to see the world. Until the eighties he saw women who were licensed to escort guests only inside the pub. He also met guests from all nationalities, most of which came to Alexandria on business trips to visit companies or factories or on ships stopping at the port.  

Gamal says that the Iraq/Kuwait War (1990) was an economic recession period for the pub. Before the war, American war ships entered the port of Alexandria twice a month and stayed for three days each time. During these three days soldiers, officers, workers, technicians and basically all of the ship’s crew would come to the pub morning and night and they tipped generously. Gamal, his brothers and his uncle made a lot of hard currency but after the war Americans set up military bases in the Gulf and they no longer needed to pass by Alexandria and its port.

Ali, Gamal’s brother and his partner in the pub for a long time before his death, was kind hearted. He was consumed with the anxiety that his daughters would not get married because people view working in pubs and serving alcohol as sinful and damaging to one’s reputation.

Gamal married the daughter of an Azhar Sheikh, a highly moral woman after he was bored with being a player and loitering in the streets and beach of Camp Cesar where he was born and spent his youth. He then felt like raising a family on the basis of morals but while enjoying freedom, independence and understanding privacy.

Gamal likes his clients. He speaks to them, listens to them, laughs with them and protects the women from clients who attempt to bother them, ogle at them or harass them. He also likes to invite the clients he has befriended to shots or glasses if he has imported alcohol from the free market.

A foreign man once came looking for a piece of memorabilia left by his son, who had since died, on a trip to Spitfire. Gamal simply broke the glass that protected the memento left by the deceased son and gave it to the man.

Gamal is in love with Spitfire. “Its walls talk to me every day” he says. He is equally in love with the sea of Alexandria for no particular reason and cannot imagine his life anywhere else. He is fond of returning home after work at the pub is over, on foot along the sea front. In Ramadan, right before sunset, his son walks along his side.

Spitfire is located in Manshiyya area of downtown Alexandria and is open daily.

*Photography by Nadia Mounir

*This text was commissioned for an upcoming publication, a City Guide to Alexandria, edited by Cairobserver’s Mohamed Elshahed and published by Brownbook.

The Anti-Cairo

URSULA LINDSEY for PLACES

Egypt’s military regime is building a new capital city in the desert, where the “People’s Piazza” will be a pale shadow of Tahrir Square.

The new capital of Egypt has no residents. It doesn’t have a local source of water. It just lost a major developer, the Chinese state company that had agreed to build the first phase. You might say the planned city in the desert 45 kilometers east of Cairo doesn’t have a reason to exist. Urban planner David Sims told the Wall Street Journal, “Egypt needs a new capital like a hole in the head.” ¹

What the project has going for it is a president who likes to talk big. Five million inhabitants big. An amusement park “four times the size of Disneyland” big. Seven hundred hospitals and clinics, 1,200 mosques and churches, 40,000 hotel rooms, 2,000 schools — that kind of big. ² Yes, and fast, too. Standing with the Emir of Dubai beside a model of the new city, in March 2015, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi declared that construction would proceed immediately. “What are you talking about, ten years?” He turned to his housing minister. “I’m serious. We don’t work that way. Not ten years, not seven years. No way.” ³

Egypt would not be the first country to move its government — parliament, presidency, ministries, and embassies — to a capital city built from scratch, but it would be the first to spend US$45 billion doing so while bread riots are breaking out in the streets. ⁴ And that’s just the cost of the first phase. The larger plan is so outlandish that it seems fantastical: a luxury development of skyscrapers and artificial lakes that turns its back on Cairo and the Nile Delta.

Read the full article here.

Book Launch: Creative Cities Cairo, 6 March

The Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research (CLUSTER) has announced the launch of their long awaited publication Creative Cities: Re-Framing Downtown Cairo based on the conference they organized in 2015. The launch will be accompanied by a panel discussion. Further information below:

March 6, 2017
Oriental Hall
The American University in Cairo, Tahrir Square
6:30 – 8:30 pm
Refreshments will be served
Come get your complimentary publication, editions are limited!

Speakers include:
Riham Arram, Executive Director, Cairo Heritage Preservation Unit
Emad Abu Ghazi, Cairo University, Former Minister of Culture
Lina Attalah, Director, Mada Masr
Tamer El Said, Co-Founder, Cimatheque Alternative Film Centre*
Omar Nagati and Beth Stryker, Co-Founders, CLUSTER
Moderated by:
Tarek Atia, Publisher, Mantiqti Downtown newspaper

*Tamer El Said will be presenting a trailer of his widely acclaimed film, shot in Downtown Cairo: In the Last Days of the City

The Creative Cities: Re-Framing Downtown Cairo conference, co-organized by CLUSTER and the American University in Cairo in late 2015, invited international examples of successful models of creative cities of relevance to the future development of Downtown Cairo, and in dialogue with local stakeholders considered the role culture can play as a catalyst for development.

Looking critically at the changes that have taken place in Cairo over the past few years, and building on the wealth of studies of both urban history and contemporary conditions that Cairo enjoys, the Creative Cities: Re-framing Downtown conference was organized to emphasize comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to issues related to public space, heritage and urban culture, the revitalization of Downtown in the context of gentrification and securitization, and urban governance. The conference brought scholars, professionals and experts together with local cultural actors, community leaders and stakeholders. The conference consisted of public plenary sessions as well as critical urban walking tours that aimed towards alternative visions for Cairo’s Downtown, informed by local practices, in addition to best practices from international contexts.

The appendix to the Creative Cities:Re-framing Downtown Cairo publication features CLUSTER’s mapping of the creative industries Downtown, and a specially produced timeline and map of heritage buildings in downtown Cairo.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/270124093416861/

In Love With The Ugly Face Of Alexandria

Samuli Schielke

In March 2015, on one of my many journeys between Berlin and Alexandria, I landed in Borg El Arab airport west of Alexandria late at night. The airport is 50 kilometres away from the city centre, but close to many thriving industrial areas, holiday villages, and up-market suburbs that have been built west of the city and along the North Coast in the past two decades. At the airport I was picked up by my friend Mustafa who moved some years ago from his native village to the district of Agami at the western edge of Alexandria. Agami is known among the Egyptian bourgeoisie as a pleasant beach resort. Mustafa, however, lives three kilometres away from the coast in an informal neighborhood on a small hill right behind the Chinese Housing (al-Masakin al-Siniya), an area of large public housing blocks. The Chinese blocks were built in the 1980’s as company housing of public sector companies by an Egyptian-Chinese joint venture. For decades, the Chinese Housing has been an area where poor and marginalised people would live, people who lack the means to build a house of their own in an informal settlement. It has a bad reputation as a place marked by gangs and crime, but the reality is much calmer. Mustafa and I moved in the area with no sense of risk even late at night. He quite likes it there. Two years earlier, an Egyptian employee at a foreign research institute in Alexandria had been shocked to hear that I frequented the Chinese Housing. She said that she was surprised that I was still alive. For her it was a no-go area, definitely not a part of her Alexandria.

[The Chinese Housing, 2016. Photo: Samuli Schielke.]

Next evening, I continued my journey on a minibus to the opposite end of the city, the neighborhood of Mandara where I usually live in Alexandria as a guest of the novelist Mukhtar Shehata. The distance from Agami to Mandara is 35 kilometres on the direct route through the city centre. To avoid congestion, the minibus takes a longer but faster detour via the International Road south of the city. The International Road crosses Lake Marioutiyya on a landfill bridge where the nauseating smell from pollution occasionally compels passengers to hold their noses. The road passes poor informal areas in inland Agami, the up-market suburb of King Mariout, vast chemical and cement factory complexes, and the up-market City Center shopping mall (far from the historical centre of the city). Finally, the minibus enters the city again along the 45 Street in what is known as “the East of the City” (Sharq al-Madina). Approaching the end of the line, the minibus turns to smaller streets, passes the Faculty of Islamic Studies of the al-Azhar University (one of the main sites of learning for foreign Muslim students who come to Egypt), and finally enters the busy Mallaha Street surrounded by shops, market stands, and congested by private cars, taxis, minibuses and toktoks.

[El-Mallaha Street in Mandara, 2016. Photo: Samuli Schielke.]

Eastern Alexandria is symbolically divided class-wise by the Abu Qir suburban train line, the seaside being relatively well off, and the inland often poorer. I live almost exactly at the class border, next to the railway line. On the wealthy side of the railway are the Montazah Gardens, the Fathallah shopping mall, the Sheraton Hotel, and the beach. On the poor side begins a concrete jungle of both poor and middle-income areas, informally built in the 1990’s and in perpetual construction, where 15-floor towers are now replacing older five-floor apartment buildings.

In Mukhtar’s words, this is “the ugly face of Alexandria.” And it would be difficult indeed to find the Chinese Blocks, the International Road, or inland Mandara beautiful in any conventional sense. However, It is not simply the poor face of the city. The suburban crescent that surrounds the old coastal core of Alexandria is made up of poor, middle-income and upmarket districts alike. Millions live and work in the suburban crescent and only enter the iconic sites of the city on the seafront and the old centre on weekend and holiday outings. The ugly face of the city has little on offer for a romantic weekend, but those who want to understand what kind of city Alexandria is today and what it may become, should not miss it.

Samuli Schielke is an anthropologist working at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin.

*Cover photo by Nadia Mounir.

*This text will appear in an upcoming publication, a City Guide to Alexandria, edited by Cairobserver’s Mohamed Elshahed and published by Brownbook.

Metro Diaries

Salma Mousallem

On a weekly basis I find myself asking my husband some version of the following “Do you remember that place by the park where we would have breakfast?” Sometimes I ask about a hike, other days it’s about a camping trip, and sometimes we just reminisce about taking the bus to work together. He always remembers because it was always nice. I never took our life for granted when we lived in California; I always knew that it was exceptional. Of course one tends to romanticize the past, but I truly can’t remember any challenge aside from missing my family, which of course is not a small thing.  

Of course from the moment we moved back three years ago, people have been asking us the same question over and over again “Why did you move back?” Always with a tone of confusion, sometimes even apprehension. As an urban planner and as a person who has a passion for working in the developing world, I wanted to make a contribution to this country, and especially after the January 25th revolution there was that moment of hope; that fleeting moment, where the impossible seemed possible.

The experience of moving back has been marked by several phases of transition, and in the latest and hardest one, the question has been turned around and I find myself asking “Did we make the right choice by moving back?”

Phase 1: Excitement intertwined with “culture/Cairo shock”

The excitement of being around for Friday morning breakfast with my parents, no longer having to miss a single wedding, birth of a best friend’s kid, or even a birthday, and the excitement of being “home”.  The culture shock of having “married to xx” written on my National ID and that having more than one meeting a day is absolutely unrealistic due to traffic. Excitement and culture shock packaged in tiny moments every single day.

Phase 2: The “hate” phase

“I hate the pollution. I hate that I can’t walk on the sidewalk and have to compete with cars for the street. I hate that there is no public park within walking distance.” Of course, there was also a series of “why” questions: Why is there poverty everywhere? Why are 10 year-olds cleaning homes? Why doesn’t the sidewalk have ramps, is that really so hard to do?

In this phase and in the struggle to find meaning, I toyed with various ridiculous ideas like moving to Aswan or Gouna. These could possibly be amazing options, but also largely unrealistic for a mother of a two-year-old and another one on the way which means an unhealthy obsession with schools. 

Phase 3: Sadness

The strangest phase has been the current one. A phase largely marked by sadness. Sadness for so many reasons summed in the feeling that any glimmer of hope has been completely obliterated. The feeling that the country is struggling is omnipresent. No sugar, no tourism, a weakened civil society, the consequences of the currency devaluation, people committing suicide under custody, the intensifying brain drain and the list goes on. The sadness that things are bad, and that they will only get worse. This of course is accompanied by a feeling that nothing will make a difference, the problem is so huge, so what’s the point of trying?

But then, I take the metro. A 15-minute ride that always grounds me and gives me perspective. To me, the metro is more than a mode of transportation, it is a glimpse into lives of the majority of Egyptians.

Every time I get on that car with about a 100 women, I see a moment in their lives, and in that moment I see a life full of hardship. A lot of the women on the metro are mothers, and now that I too am a mother, their hardship has a whole new meaning. When my daughter was born, we bought a ridiculous amount of gear for her – the baby stroller, the carrier, the sling, the car seat – a bunch of consumer goods designed to make my life that much easier. On the metro, the normal scene is that of a woman carrying her 3-month old on her shoulder, groceries in the other hand, and her 5-year-old leaning against her legs. Her gear is simply her body.

I also look at the layers upon layers that most of the women are wearing because a winter jacket is just not a priority or affordable. I look at the market economy that flourishes in the metro, and admire the genius that it is. But what gets me every single time, are the stairs. The stairs are like Everest to me. Yet, women and men of all ages, shapes and sizes climb one step at a step time, because for a ticket price of 1 Egyptian pound there is simply no other option.

So what? Somehow, the metro gives me hope. Not because I realize that so many people have it worse than me yet here they are pushing through their days, but because of their attitude. Of course, there is the occasional bickering when someone is trying to get off or on an over packed car, but generally the attitude is one of strength, perseverance, and defiance. It is a survival attitude and even if that attitude is borne out of necessity, to me it deserves admiration. For me, this experience makes the question of “Should we leave?” trivial. Instead, I feel like I must stay, I want to stay. Because while I am not making the change that I once dreamt of, I believe I owe it to these women to stay. Having been given a life full of privilege, I feel that with that privilege comes a responsibility: A responsibility to be part of this anemic economy, a responsibility to use my education to the best of my abilities, a responsibility to participate. Maybe, I will never be able to build the bike lanes or stroller friendly sidewalks I have been dreaming of, but by being here - I am standing with these women who are trudging through the metro day in day out.

Five lessons from Colombo to Cairo

محمد الشاهد

واقعنا العمراني في مصر يزداد سوء كل يوم. كل يوم مانشيتات عن مشروعات عمرانية ضخمة بتكلة مليارات، لكن تفاصيل الحياه في المدينة اللي احنا عاشين فيها (تفاصيل زي الرصيف، التراث المعماري، هوية المكان، الخ..) في حالة ركود في احسن الاحوال او انحدار تام في اغلبها. كلما رفع احد صورة وقارن مدن مصر بمكان اخر تسير به الامور بشكل افضل تعلوا اصوات مبررة تقول “احنا مش دبي، معندناش بترول زيهم” او “احنا مش آوروبا، شعبنا ماينفعش معاه الكلام ده.” وتكون النتيجة قتل اي محاولة للنقاش العام حول البديهيات في حياتنا اليومية في المدينة. لكن للمقارنة فايدة كبيرة وعشان كده انا مش هقارن بدبي او باريس لكن ببلد ومدينة اقرب لنا اقتصاديا وحتى سياسيا، سريلانكا. في التدوينة دي، ودي اول مرة من فترة طويلة اكتب على الموقع، هكتب بالعامية عن خمس مشاهد في مدينة كولومبو، عاصمة سريلانكا وافكر بصوت عالي المشاهد دي ممكن تقولنا ايه عن واقعنا العمراني في مصر النهاردة.

الصورة الاولى: ده كبري صغير بيعبر جذور شجرة كبرت لحد ما كسرت الرصيف. ده شارع عادي خالص ومافيهوش حاجة مميزة. لكن الوضع تم التعامل معاه مش عشان في حد مهم او في مزار سياحي لكن عشان في شجرة لازم تعيش ومشاه لازم يمشوا. انا ماشفتش في ارقى احياء القاهرة (اللي البلدية بتغتال اشجارها كل موسم وسايبا الرصفان مكسرة والزبالة متكومة) ارصفة زي اللي في اي حي عادي في كولومبو، سريلانكا.

الصورة الثانية: ده بيت معماري حداثي من سريلانكا اسمه جيفري باوا. البيت حالته زي ماهو واضح في الصورة. يوميا في ٤ جوالات فالبيت للتعريف بالمهندس وازاي طبق افكاره فالعماره في منزله الخاص. الارشيف بتاعه كمان محفوظ هنا ومتاح للباحثين. البيت وعقارات تانية صممها المهندس (مات في ٢٠٠٣) تديرها مؤسسة شبه فكرة الوقف. مافيش مهندس مصري حداثي في مصر حصل معاه اي حاجة زي كده.

الجولة اللي كنت فيها كانت حوالي ٢٠ شخص، الثلاث جولات التانيين فاليوم كانو كامل العدد. الزوار كان منهم سياح جايين يشوفوا شق تاني من تاريخ سريلانكا المعاصر، ومهندسين او مهتمين بالعمارة زي حالاتي من بلاد مختلفة، وطلاب عمارة من الهند جايين مخصوص علشان يشوفوا تطور العمارة في سريلانكا ويصوروا ويستكشفوا لوحدهم بدون اساتذة ماتمسكهم بإيدهم.

الخلاصة، ان في نماذج مهمة مش بس لإحترام التاريخ المعاصر والحديث اللي منه المبدعين في مجالات زي العمارة، انما كمان ده نموذج للسياحة اللي قايمة على كتف اجتهاد المجتمع المدني ومحاولاته للحفاظ على تاريخ بلده زي ماهو شايفه مش بس زي ما وزير قاعد في مكتب في شارع اسمه الجبلاية ما يقرر.

الصورة الثالثة: سريلانكا تاريخها المعاصر تاريخ زفت فيه حرب اهلية من ٨٣ لحد ٢٠٠٩. وفي الحرب دي مات الاف كتير وتم تهجير وقتل مستهدف اقلية معينة. بالتالي المبنى ده بيحكي تاريخ البلد من وجهة نظر الفائز في المعركة دي، النظام الحالي اللي وراه الجيش اللي عمل حلقات قتل واسعة ومصايب كتير. لكن الجيش الجشع ده بيحاول عن طريق العمارة وفكرة المتحف كمساحة لسرد التاريخ انه يحكي الحكاية السياسية للبلد من وجهة نظره.

دي حديقة عامة، نظيفة، بلا اسوار ولا عساكر ولا مخبرين ولا لوحة رخام منحوت عليها “في عهد فلان الفلاني تم افتتاح النافوة"، لان النافورة او اي حاجة عامة لما بتتعمل في اي بلد هيا جزء من وظيفة فلان الفلاني مش كرم منه والنافورة، او الطريق، او الميدان اللي أتعمل في عهد فلان هما أصلا بفلوس البلد ودايمين أطول بكتير من عهد فلان، لو اتعملوا صح طبعا. الجنينة تخطيطها كلاسيكي ومكونتها مبنية صح مش بالشكل العفش اللي اتعودنا عليه في ميادينا وحدائقنا. اللي فالخلفية ده نصب تذكاري للاستقلال اتبنى سنة ٥٣، خمس سنين بعد الاستقلال (هو صحيح مصر مافيهاش نصب تذكاري او متحف مهتم بالسردية الرسمية للاستقلال ليه؟ هو مش مصر المفروض استقلت سنة ٥٢؟). المبنى معمول صح، مبني صح من صخر محلي بالصقف اللي بيفكر الناس بالعمارة المحلية التقليدية وعواميد تجمع بين التصميم الحديث والعمارة القديمة للجزيرة, اشبه بمحاولات مهندسين في مصر زي مصطفى فهمي باشا، مهندس القصر، اللي صمم ضريح سعد وحاول يخلط الحديث بالتراث الفرعوني المدروس بماييره الصحيحة… مفيش ابتذال وعماويد فرعوني فايبر جلاس وبلاستيك متصممة بشكل لا صله له بالعمارة الفرعونية اصلا زي المحكمة الدستورية او المباني التجارية اللي بتحاول تفكرنا بالفرعوني وياريتها ما حاولت.

المهم. تحت المساحة المفتوحة دي في صالة متحفية فيها سرد للحدوتة الرسمية لتاريخ البلد من اوائل الملوك حتى الصراع للحريات والاستقلال. النموذج ده للنصب التذكاري المفتوح للعامة لنشر قصة معينة لتاريخ بلد في نضاله للاستقلال موجود في بلاد كتير من اللي استقلوا في منتصف القرن العشرين او حتى قبل. النموذج ده كمان بنلاقيه في بلاد قامت فيها ثورات غيرت من مسارها، زي مثلا المكسيك.

المهم ان هنا في نصب الاستقلال في كولومبو التاريخ بيقف في السبعينيات لما الجيش تدخل في السياسة وقامت حرب اهلية لمدة عشرين سنة وطبعا مفيش سيرة لده.

المشكلة هنا ان النوع ده من الامكنة موجود تقريبا في جميع بلاد العالم اللي نضجت (او حتى اتخلقت في يوم وليلة زي اسرائيل) في القرن العشرين ودايما بتكون مكتوبة الحكاية من وجهة نظر الفائز اللي داس على بقيت الشعب علشان يحكم. لكن فين ده في مصر؟ متحف الثورة اللي في الزمالك كان المفروض يكون ده لكنه عمره ماخلص. عدم وجود ده مشكلة لان لما السردية الرسمية مش بتقدم نفسها بشكل دائم بالحجر بيكون صعب الرد عليها. هنرد على ايه؟ فين الدولة اللي المفروض جموع الشعب يسمع كلامها، فينها جغرافيا في المدينة وفين علاماتها؟ فين المساحات المدينية بتاعتها؟ مفيش. لان زي ما بنكتشف كل يوم اكتر واكتر في مصر الدولة فعلا لم تنضج ولم تنتج الشكليات المتعارف عليها عالميا لاثبات وجودها وقصتها. هي فعلا شبه دولة.

الصورة الرابعة: مش هتكلم على نظافة الشارع ولا الشجر اللي متساب يكبر زي ما ربنا خلقه (بدل مجازر الشجر اللي في شوارع مصر شهريا، مفيش شجرة بتتساب تكبر لحجمها الطبيعي).

انا بس حبيت اوري فكرة ان العمارة الحداثية، او المسمى في نص القرن العشرين بالعمارة العالمية لانها كانت بتتبني في كل انحاء العالم خاصة على ايد حكومات العالم الثالث اللي بتحاول تثبت للدول اللي كانت قايمة على الاحتلال ان "احنا كمان عندنا حداثة واحسن من عندكم”. العمارة دي في مصر سمعتها اتشوه من ساعة السادات واتنسبت لشخص عبد الناصر. البروباجاندا ضد الناصرية وافكارها اترجم لكراهية لعمارة الفترة الحداثية اللي في اصلها فكر جمالي متشارك على مستوى العالم بيرمز لحداثة منفصلة عن اوروبا، المباني دي بقت في مصر مصدر قرف، والناس اتعودوا وعودوا عيالهم انها عمارة قبيحة ولازم نمسحها ونهدها. فتتحول مدينة نصر (او المهندسين او الدقي او اي منطقة اتشكلت عمارتها من الثلاثينيات الى الستينات على ايد مهندسين مصريين) اللي ليها مثيل في دول كتير الى نسخة مشوه من فكرتها الاصليه. تتهد عمارتها ال٤ ادوار الحداثية التصميم ويتبني مكانها عمارات شاهقة رديئة التصميم مغلفة واجهاتها بالعماويد الجبس اللي بتحاول تقول على لسان سكان الطبقة الوسطة الجديدة “احنا مودرن، عندنا ذوق شوفو حتى الكرانيش المستعارة من اوروبا” فتمسح العمارة الحداثية من عصر مابعد الاستقلال وتستبدل بعمارة مزيفة تتمسح في اوروبا وتقبل الهزيمة ان “احنا فعلا مانسواش حاجة من غيرك يا اوروبا.. اد عمود كبير اهو”. العقدة النفسية المصرية في الهوية. لا هنا ولا هناك. جبس مجسم على شكل مثلثي بيفكرنا بمعابد اليونان الوثنية ومكتوب جواها “هذا من فضل ربي”.

في نفس الوقت تلك العمارة الحداثية اللي بتوثق لحظة مهمة في تاريخ جنوب العالم في منتصف القرن العشرين بكل طموحاته التقدمية، حتى ولو فشلت جزئيا، لسة متحافظ عليها زي ماهو واضح هنا في سريلانكا.

الصورة الخامسة: مصر فيها احد اقدم جناين الحيوانات في العالم. لكن حالها زفت. من الحاجات اللي استمتعت بيها في كولومبو قد ايه الناس لسة بتخرج لاماكن الدولة بتوفرها للرفاهية، الحدائق العامة او جنينة الحيوانات مثلا. انا فاكر لما كنا بنعمل كدا في مصر ايام طفولتي، كان في اماكن عامة (كلها اتصمم واتبنى قبل ما اتولد بكتير مش على ايد مبارك او السادات لكن قبل كده) لكن كانت لسة محافظة على نفسها.. منها الجناين بانواعها والمتاحف والشواطئ العامة او حتى الكورنيش. كل ده تقريبا اختفى في مصر مع تراجع الدولة عن دورها الاساسي في توفير مساحات عامة للرفاهية. دلوقت اللي عايز يخرج مع عيلته او اصحابه بيروح فين؟ مول؟ كافيه؟ قهوة؟ نادي بإشتراك سنوي قد كده في قد كده؟ لازم يصرف؟ ده مش عادي على فكرة. في نفس الوقت، نفس المساحات اللي كانت موجودة زمان بتتآكل او بتختفي. جنينة الحيوانات في اسكندرية ومدن تانية في مصر خلاص مافيهاش  و حيوانات اصلا. الجناين العامة القليلة الفاضلة ماشية بالبركة ومفيش وضوح من المسؤل وبدير الاماكن دي ازاي، كل جنينة شكل وكله بالبركة حسب الجنايني لكن الاغلبية اختفت او اتقفلت في وش الجمهور.

بالمقارنة، انا رحت جنينة الحيوانات النهاردة في كولومبو (مبنية سنة ١٩٣٦). يوم اثنين اول الاسبوع وكانت الجنينة على اخرها مليانة صحاب، شباب، اسر من كل اطياف البلد، مسلمين، هندوس، مسيحيين، بوذيين، كله خارج. الجنينة مبهرة من حيث النظافة، التصميم (اللي بيحسسك انك مع الحيوانات وانهم مش بس في قفص غير ادمي يصعبوا عليك وانت بتتفرج عليهم. لافتات في كل حتة بتشرح بثلاث لغات كل كائن فالمكان. الحيوانات شكلها يشرح القلب، فيهم الصحة، الوانهم زاهية والاطفال والكبار بالتالي مبسوطين. قفص القرد في جنينة الحيوانات مقياس للدولة على فكرة.. للاسف حاسس ان لو القرود اللي عندنا فالقفص هما اللي ماسكين الدولة هيكون حالها احسن من اللي احنا وحيواناتنا فيه.

تطوير القاهرة ومدن مصر مش هيحصل بالمدن الجديدة في نص الصحرا ولا الرسومات الديجيتال على صفحات الفيس بوك بتاعة استشاريين بيسترزقوا على حسابنا وبينتجوا وهم عمراني مستقبلي مالوش لازمة اصلا. التطوير يبدآ لاصغر التفاصيل في حياة المدينة من الرصيف وطالع. ده محتاج مهندسين واخدين المهدنة جد ومحليات وبلديات بتشتغل بجد. عقبال ما نبقى زي سريلانكا.

Rebuilding Aleppo?

الأسئلة الحلبية

نبيل الهادي

صمتنا قد يكون منبعه القرف او رفض لعدمية ما يجرى حولنا و قد يكون غير ذلك كما غرد المفكر عزمى بشارة. هذا الصمت كثيرا ما يحارب فى رؤسنا أسئلة تكاد تخترقها او تنفجر فيها ليس أقلها عن مواقفنا فيما يحدث حولنا سواء فى الإطار المباشر أو الإقليمى و الدولى. و تثير النقاشات التى تجرى فى الإجتماعات الدولية حول ما يجرى خاصة فى سوريا و اليمن و العراق و مناطق أخرى بل و تجدد تلك المعارك الدماغية الداخلية بين الرغبة فى الصمت و الرغبة فى المشاركة فى النقاش.  

حضرت منذ عدة ايّام مؤتمرا فى أحد المدن الألمانية عن التعامل مع المناطق التاريخية فى مرحلة ما بعد الحرب. و كان لحلب نصيب واضح فيها ( كان ذلك قبل سقوط المدينة بأكثر من أسبوع) و انشغل بعض المعماريين و غيرهم بتوضيح الدمار و تصور كيف يمكن توثيقه تمهيدا لإعادة البناء. استمعت لعروض تؤكد أن المبانى خاصة التاريخية منها وجدت لتتعدى بوجودها وجودنا ( على الأقل زمنيا) كما استمعت إلى عرض مثير للإهتمام و إن كان نظريا مجردا لا يتناول مكان أو حادث معين يتحدث عن المسؤلية الأخلاقية فى هذا الإطار.  و ابديت انزعاجى من غياب الاهتمام بالإطار الأوسع لعملية التنمية بجوانبها الاقتصادية و البيئية و الإجتماعية عن النقاش الدائر و الذى يهتم أثاثا بالأثر كمبنى لأنى لا أرى وجها لكيفية عمل ذلك بدون التفكير فى الإطار الشامل و تناقشت مع بعض السوريات و بعض الألمان عن تصوراتهم و كيف أنه من الممكن أن يتم استغلال او اساءة استخدام المعرفة و المعلومات المهنية التى يعكف علي جمعها و تطويرها المعماريون و المخططون و الأثريون سواء من قبل هذا الطرف أو ذاك و كانت أحدى الحجج الأولية التى ابديتها خاصة لمن رئيتهم يعكفون على عمل مخطط دقيق لحلب القديمة يشمل كل ( نعم كل) المبانى المسجلة و المبانى القيمة أن هذا العمل قد يستغل من قبل من يريد إزالة سريعة لآثار العدوان و التدمير و ربما تغيير الطبيعة السكانية للمكان كى يوحى بأن الوضع عاد تحت السيطرة و طبعا سيحدث هذا فى غياب المجتمع الذى تم تهجيره بالكامل و نقله إلى أماكن أخرى و بدون استشارة هؤلاء الذين عاشوا و تملكوا ليس فقط المبنى اسميا و لكن ذكرياتهم التى صنعت التاريخ و جسدته حيا و هى القادرة على نقله للآخرين. قال لى أحد الأساتذه أن أحد الحكومات الغربية قد تتعهد بتمويل كبير لإعادة بناء المدينة المنكوبة (و بالطبع يلزم أن يكون هناك خطط معدة لاستخدام تلك الأموال) فقلت له و لكن إعادة البناء قد يتم بصورة بها من المشاكل الكثير فقد يساء استخدام الخدمات  و المعلومات و الخبرات المهنية و التقنية لاغراض لا تخدم الإعمار الحقيقى ( بل قد تكون ضده على طول الخط). قال إن الأمور قد لا تسير بالصورة الصحيحية و لكنها أيضا قد تسير فى الوجهة الصحيحة و فى أخر الجملة قال أنها على الأرجح قد لا تسير بالصورة الواجبة.

ما كان يشغلنى فى الحوار كما أوضحت له هو كيف للمهنى ( المعمارى , المخطط, الأثرى ..) أن يقدم خدماته لكن فى الوقت ذاته يكون واعيا بما قد يترتب على اساءة استخدامها لأن الشائع أن المهنى يقدم خدماته و يحصر مسؤليته عند ذلك و قد لا يشغل نفسه بالعواقب . و لكن هل نستطيع ذلك هل نستطيع أن نتجاهل أن ما نوثقه ( أو يوثقه الغرب بمساعدة من أطراف متعددة) قد يستخدم لإعادة بناء هياكل لمدينة فى غياب أصحاب المكان و ملاكه و ربما ضد مصلحتهم كأفراد و كمجتمع محلى؟؟ 

لم تبدأ هذه المجهودات الحثيثة لمرحلة ما بعد الإعمار بالأمس و لكنها بدأت منذ عدة سنوات و فى غياب ليس فقط من مشاركة جادة ممن يهمهم و يلمسهم الأمر كالمعماريين و المخططين العرب و لكن فى تجاهل للأسئلة التى يطرحها الموقف و التى لا تخص حلب فقط  و لكن تخص العمران بصفة عامة فى مدننا و خاصة التى بها آثار من تاريخ  و ما أكثرها. 

هل السؤال هو متى و بأية وسيلة نعيد البناء المدمر فى حلب ؟
أم كيف نبدأ عملية عودة الحياة للمدينة؟
لا يجب و لا ينبغى أن نكون فى وضع نسأل فيه الأثر أم الإنسان لأن تواجد كلاهما أساس لأى عمران حى و الإنسان هو الأصل و هو المبرر الرئيسى لقيمة الأثر. و لكن كيف نتعامل مع الأثر و الإنسان معا هو السؤال الواجب طرحه و مناقشته و يكون للمهنى سواء المعمارى, المخطط أو الأثرى دور فى تصور تبعات تلك النقاش و كيف تؤثر على وضع خطط للتعامل مع المدن المدمرة نتيجة للصراع الوحشى.
هل ما يحدث فى الغرب امتداد للرؤية و السلوك الاستعمارى ؟ سؤال اجابته يسيرة و لكن الأهم ماذا فعلنا نحن؟
هل ناقشنا؟
هل النقاش مهم؟
هل للنقاش جدوى؟
أم أننا سنكتفى بالأشارة و نوجه الاتهامات.

Cairo Now! Exhibition Texts

Mohamed Elshahed

Design is more global than ever. Trends sweep across geographical boundaries in unprecedented ways, and cities are the major nodes where the global is manifested. Architects and designers are increasingly mobile — albeit depending on what passport they carry. Hipster cafes look nearly the same whether in London, Berlin or Beirut, with salvaged wood details and Edison lights. Co-working spaces for young entrepreneurs the world over have Vitra chairs and stationary provided by a handful of international brands that have come to define the current cool. There is little difference between the products in an Ikea on the outskirts of Cairo and an Ikea in suburban New Jersey. 

Marc Augé’s notion of “non-places” has taken on new manifestations since he coined it back in 1995 — when most of the designers featured in this exhibition were toddlers or teenagers, and the Internet had only recently become available in select households in Cairo. In terms of design, non-places today are no longer only international airports: many of our own domestic spaces now have little specificity to local design. But this is not an argument against the global or a call for resurrecting national or regional design — such attempts tend to be applied only in terms of superficial appearance, enacted after the death of local design as postmortem gestures by markets seeking to capitalize on the fetishization of the “authentic.” A “traditional” clay dish sold at a mall fashioned as a souq in Abu Dhabi is likely made in China, and designers in Cairo and London follow the same trends in ways that surpass the relationships they have with the provinces and villages around them.

Iconic City creates a unique space within Dubai Design Week for cities, first Beirut and now Cairo, to showcase how they fit into the world of design. But in this global context, what is the value of documenting design in a particular place?

Cairo Now! City Incomplete seeks to answer this question by presenting a portrait of the Egyptian capital today through its design culture. Despite being peripheral in terms of international design circuits, Cairo is both a place of vibrant vernacular design culture and home to resourceful designers who take the city as their muse — the source of their creativity. The exhibition showcases the work of over 60 designers, architects and design-centric research projects. Nearly all the featured designers are under 40, and most work from makeshift workspaces in their own residences. Cairo being the massive urban conglomerate that it is, most have not met one another. In this context, this exhibition is an act of activism that aims to record the design landscape of present-day Cairo, to help forge a network of its creative makers and to carve a way forward to realizing the potential of the city as a relevant locus on the global design map.

The exhibition’s subtitle takes its inspiration from the infamous visual impression of Cairo’s red-brick housing stock in varying stages of completion. The aesthetics of incompletion permeate Cairo’s design culture in content and form. It’s an ever-expanding metropolis of disconnected realities, including partly realized satellite cities full of the unfinished buildings of speculative urbanism, half-restored historic structures, and a disjointed transport system. City Incomplete points to the unfulfilled potential — the possibilities for making, producing and innovating — that the city’s designers strive for.

Designers in Cairo deal with conditions that both inspire their work and restrain their creativity. Importing certain materials and parts is difficult, and exporting products is complicated due to tight customs measures, licensing and bureaucracy. Selling online is not as simple as it should be and a constantly fluctuating currency makes such transactions increasingly complicated, particularly for small-scale design workshops that often consist of one or two designers. Locally, the marketplace is saturated with imported goods that make it difficult for individual designers to leave their mark.

In Cairo, residents build entire neighborhoods to accommodate their needs outside of government planning, and designers make due with what’s available to continue to create. Incompleteness turns into informality and everyone becomes a spontaneous designer in his or her search for everyday solutions. Thus, Cairo is a place of inspiration due to the resulting rich, often chaotic, visual culture, but it is also a difficult place to survive economically as a designer.

During the research phase to identify the city’s makers and designers, several trends emerged. These included up-cycling, revisiting fading crafts and an urge to fashion a new visual and calligraphic identity that is specifically Egyptian and contemporary. These trends, as well as the state of design education in Egypt today, are discussed in articles in the following pages provided by the journalists and writers of Mada Masr, Egypt’s leading independent journalism outfit.

The exhibition is organized around several loosely defined categories: Furniture and product design (such as Reform Studio, Up-fuse, Menn Baladha, Studio Meem), architecture (Shahira Fahmy, Samir El Kordy), graphic design and branding (such as Ahmad Hammoud, Amro Thabit, Ghada Wali, Salma Shamel), in addition to several research-based initiatives that focus on documenting the city’s urban condition (Takween, Cluster) and its vernacular design culture (Samaklaban, Dead Walls, Found Khatt). The exhibition space, designed by architect Adham Selim, is not merely a backdrop — it’s a fundamental part of the exhibited works.

In the ever-more globalized design culture, Cairo’s unique urban condition informs in very specific ways the processes by which design objects are produced. Cairo’s contemporary design landscape is a work in progress but it offers an important contribution to our wider understanding of how things are made in response to local realities. The exhibition brings together works from multiple design disciplines, which when shown together manifest an alternative portrait of Cairo now.

‘The future is here:’ On design education in Egypt

Yasmine Zohdi

For decades, the main supplier of designers in Egypt was the state-run Helwan University’s Faculty of Applied Arts and Faculty of Fine Arts. But the founding of design programs at the German University in Cairo (2006) and at the American University in Cairo (2011) has created a shift, tipping the balance in favor of the private sector and paving the way for an evolving design culture in the country.

It seems to be a common view that a vibrant design scene is growing and thriving in Cairo as part of a greater movement sweeping the region, despite the challenges posed by Egypt’s current political climate and its education system.

[Read full article here]

Heritage in design: Embracing flux and function over blind nostalgia

Lara El Gibaly

I was intrigued, I admit, when a pop-art-meets-nostalgia design trend took over Cairo’s homeware stores about six years ago. The products had “western” color schemes and patterns while promoting Egyptian pop heritage.

I could now enjoy a warm beverage in a mug that was like me, a mix of things that shouldn’t really go together — Om Kalthoum’s face meets Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe prints. But after evermore coasters, posters, serving trays and t-shirts emerged featuring iconic figures from Egypt’s “golden era” I began to tire of the deluge of products and their superficial rendering of Egyptian identity, not to mention my own superficial consumption of it.

Talking to several young Egyptian product and furniture designers featured in Dubai Design Week’s exhibition Cairo Now: City Incomplete this month, I found I was not alone. In attempting to find answers for my questions — in a global design culture, what do phrases like cultural appropriation, self-exoticism, and “authentically Egyptian” even mean anymore? — I found that for each of these designers working with so-called Egyptian heritage takes very different forms, but that function, craft, visions for the future and creative thinking are key.

[Read full article here]

Shahira Fahmy: A career that responded to a revolution

Ingy Higazy

Like many architects, Shahira Fahmy’s activities bridge practice, research and academia. But she is also very much involved in quite different activities, and this likely informs her unusual approach.

As someone who produces her products and designs primarily through what she calls a process of subtraction, the 42-year-old prides herself on making use of whatever is offered to her. She points to a white cup she created out of a single block of clay as an embodiment of her whole approach.

[Read full article here]

Hopes for an Arabic type boom: Breaking the rules but not too far

Lara El Gibaly

There are 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. There are four possible written forms for each letter, depending on whether it stands alone, or occurs at the beginning, middle or end of a word. Then there are the diacritic symbols, indicating the script’s correct pronunciation, that hover gently above or below each letter’s lines and curves.

What does this all spell out? A tough challenge for aspiring Arabic type designers.

“There is no content online for learning Arabic type design, so for designers who are self-taught like myself, it’s very difficult to learn,” says Mohammed Gaber, founder of Kief type foundry.

[Read full article here]

Global up-cycling design trend finds itself at home in Cairo

Rowan El Shimi

Strolling through Lisbon’s hilltop alleys in 2008, I came across a shop selling uniquely designed up-cycled products: a milk-carton wallet, a liquor-bottle lamp and a cereal-box notebook cover. In my young, hopeful state, I felt right at home. It embodied how I wanted people to live: without waste, with creativity and with possessions that carry a cause.

The shop wasn’t one of a kind, of course. Due to awareness campaigns, the economically privileged around the world were shifting consumption habits and looking for organic, locally produced and environmentally friendly food, clothes, furniture and transport. Designers, farming initiatives and business people were stepping up to be part of the movement.

[Read full article here]

Living temporarily, thinking temporarily: Artists on Cairo’s everyday design solutions

Rowan El Shimi

Walking down most Cairo streets, you’re likely to find a bicycle transformed into a vehicle for picking up junk, a shop made of sheet wood and vegetable crates or a group of children playing football with a plastic soda bottle.

Cairo is a city that’s constantly making do with what it has, a city in constant flux. Decades of overpopulation, poor structural planning and tough economic conditions for most of its inhabitants mean that, for better or for worse, it is full of physical manifestations of everyday design creativity.

During a four-month residency program at Townhouse gallery in 2015, Dutch artist Joran Koster —who had created Converted Bicycles, documenting repurposed bikes in India, the previous year — closely followed these street design solutions. Limiting his search to Townhouse’s neighborhood, which has socio-economic diversity and many craftspeople, he found several gems.

[Read full article here]

On Samir El Kordy: Dystopian architecture and new fantasies

Jenifer Evans

Samir El Kordy is a tall, slim, soft-spoken man whose love of contradiction feels almost perverse. “Ignorance is the main virtue in this project,” the architect tells me, speaking of the house he’s currently building, his fifth. He calls it the Gym House because the neighbors and authorities are convinced that it’s a gym, not a home.

When he first went to the site in Rehab City, New Cairo, with the client, he immediately saw the commission was going to be a challenge. It was to be built in the half-subterranean ground floor of an apartment building and totally hidden by a high wall surrounding the property — a “wrapped condition.”

“What I liked about it was that it’s full of faults,” he says.

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*A Cairo edition of this special Cairobserver issue will be released in December including additional pages, and all articles in Arabic and English. 

**Publication design by Ahmad Hammoud

When Attitudes Become Design

Adham Selim is the architect and designer of the displays of the exhibition Cairo Now! City Incomplete, curated by Mohamed Elshahed for Dubai Design Week 2016. The exhibition has been extended for the entire month of November. In this text, Selim reflects on his concept and approach for his design intervention in the exhibition.

Adham Selim

Traditionally, display surfaces and objects such as vitrines, tables, pedestals and walls are designed primarily to enable viewers to see and engage with exhibited artifacts. These surfaces and objects should be neutral, non-interfering and of no particular significance themselves. They are often “designed,” although they must not beseech the status of autonomous design objects — in other words, they are designed specifically to look undesigned. Exhibition architects often address this condition in terms that either undermine architecture via passively tactical camouflage that facilitates an unobstructed figure-ground reading, as in a white-box-in-white-cube scenario, or “overmine” architecture via a forced formalistic reading, transforming the exhibition space itself into an autonomous figural presence of display systems, akin to that of commercial exhibition booths.

This militant sensitivity toward the line between what is exhibited and what is not is disturbed in an exhibition about design as a mode of incompleteness. Both the displays and what they display are in fact objects of the same kind: although they ¬might be different in degree, they are both objects in an unresolved phase-space of yet-to-become-design objects.

In Cairo Now: City Incomplete, the horizontal and vertical display surfaces and objects, including walls, are disguised as design objects, paradoxically appearing and disappearing among the displayed objects. These displays are vaguely present next to, above or below the exhibited artifacts; they are there to display and be displayed, in as much as they confuse the two. The result is a literal and lyrical superposition of figures on figures: a display of displays, playfully transposing relationships between design objects themselves, between design objects and their display surfaces, and between these two and the space they both occupy, each becoming interchangeably permutable between figure and ground.  

The minimal articulation of partially painted chipboard triangles and thin metal frames lends itself to different iterations varying from displays to objects to walls, continuously indexing this transience. The triangulated framework of lighting bulbs follows a strict hidden grid functioning as a notational system for the exhibition space, yet it acquires the status of a design object itself, as if, at moments, the metronome’s sound becomes the music.

These formal gestures invoke Harald Szeeman’s legendary When Attitudes Become Form in 1969, an exhibition often credited for diluting the primacy of the art object in the European tradition in favor of the process of its becoming, replacing the articulation of spaces with that of human activity within them. Whereas Szeeman celebrated material performance and the agency of the viewer to generate a multitude of perceptions, the architecture of Cairo Now: City Incomplete features pieces of heterogeneous forms, incomplete in themselves. These forms do not add up to something larger or more coherent except a compendium of short and accidental stories. The scheme is intentionally fragmented, episodic and suggestive of unease; the space it produces is one that is differentiated yet interconnected as a series of separate spatial situations subject to the viewer’s montage.

عندما تصبح النوايا تصميماً

غالباً ما تهدف مسطحات وتجهيزات العرض كالفترينات والطاولات والقواعد والحوائط أساساً إلى تمكين المشاهدين من رؤية الأعمال المعروضة والتفاعل معها. عادة ما تكون هذه المسطحات والتجهيزات محايدة، لا تتداخل مع المعروضات، ولا تحوز دلالة خاصة بعينها. وبالرغم من كونها جاءت إلى الوجود عبر فعل تصميم مشابه، إلا أنها لا تحظى بمكانة أعمال التصميم القائمة بذاتها. بطريقة أو بأخرى، هي أعمال مصممة، إلا أنها مصممة خصيصاً كي تبدو غير مصممة. عادةً ما يتعامل معماريو المعارض مع هذا الحال بخطاب يعمد إمّا إلى إضمار العمارة عبر تعمية تكتيكية تيّسر على المشاهد قراءة غير مستعصية لما هو شكل وما هو خلفية، أو على الناحية الأخرى، تعمد إلى إدغام العمارة عبر قراءة شكلانية مقحمة، تحيل المعرض إلى حضور شكلاني مستقل من أنظمة العرض على شاكلة أجنحة المعارض التجارية.
ترتبك هذه الحساسية القطعية تجاه الفصل بين ما هو عارض وما هو معروض في سياق يتناول التصميم كمنهج لعدم الاكتمال. إذ تتشابه أعمال التصميم مع تجهيزات العرض من حيث النوع، وإن اختلفا بالدرجة، في كونهما واقعين في برزخ من أعمال تصميم في طور المآل.
في القاهرة الآن: مدينة غير مكتملة، تتنكر مسطحات العرض الأفقية والرأسية، و من ضمنها الحوائط، في هيئة أعمال تصميم، لتظهر وتختفي بشكل متناقض ضمن الأعمال المعروضة. هي حاضرة بغموض بجوار، وفوق، وتحت المعروضات، تعرض وتُعرض، بقدر ما يلتبس وضعها بين الأمرين. النتيجة هي تراكب حرفي وشعري من أشكال على أشكال، عرض عن العرض، يتلاعب بالعلاقات بين المعروضات وبعضها، وبين المعروضات ومسطحات العرض، وبين الاثنين وفضاء العرض الذي يحويهما، بحيث يتبادل كل منهم باستمرار أدوار الآخرين بين شكل وخلفية.

يخضع التجلّي المينمالي لألواح الرقائق الخشبية المطلية جزئياً والهياكل المعدنية النحيفة إلى ترجمات متعددة تتقلب من مسطحات عرض إلى معروضات  إلى جدران، كمحطات تسجّل هذا التحول المستمر. الهياكل المثلّثة لمصابيح الإضاءة تتبع شبكة صارمة غير مرئية، تعمل كنظام تنويط لفضاء العرض، إلا أنها أيضاً تفترض لنفسها مكانة العمل التصميمي المستقل، وكأن دقات المترونوم قد استحالت هي نفسها إلى موسيقى.
تستدعي هذه الإيماءت الشكلانية قبساً من معرض هرالد زيمان التاريخي في العام 1969 عندما تصبح النوايا شكلاً، و الذي عادة ما ينسب له تفكيك أهمية العمل الفني لصالح صيرورته، و استبدال التجليات المادية للفضاءات بتجليات النشاط الإنساني الجاري فيها. فبينما يحتفي زيمان بأدائية المواد ودور المشاهد في إنتاج قراءات متعددة للعمل الفني، تتكون عمارة معرض القاهرة الآن: مدينة غير مكتملة من أجزاء من أشكال متغايرة غير مكتملة في ذاتها. لا تتضافر هذه الأشكال لصياغة تكوين أكبر أو أكثر اتساقاً، هي بالأحرى تجميع من القصص القصيرة العارضة وغير المتصلة. التصميم مجزّء عمداً، ويقع في حلقات منفصلة، ويثير إحساساً بعدم الارتياح. الفضاء الناتج مفصّل إلا أنه يتصل كسلسلة من المواقف المختلفة عبر مونتاج في ذهن المشاهد.