Next Project

Cooling Cairo

Part 2 Project 2008
Samia Chaudhry
Vishal Shah
Nick Rogers
Nick Sinden
University of Greenwich | UK
X Water table sinking
X Smog thickening
X Agriculture dwindling
X Illegal housing spreading
X Desert advancing
X Oil disappearing
X Congestion lengthening
X Refuse wasting
X Monuments eroding
X Infrastructure collapsing
X Heritage decaying
X Temperatures rising

An Urban Desert!

We established a strategy for instigating positive change. Healing purifying irrigating educating empowering and establishing urban cooperatives.

Cease investment in automobile infrastructure.
Establish laws on property ownership and occupation.
Increase city life on river.
Invest in ferry terminals as new public buildings.
Invest in education (connected to ferry terminals)
Establish Egyptian tourism experienced from Nile.
Slow life down.
Encourage slow movement
Water wheels feeding rooftop aqueducts.
Irrigate the city rooftops.
Fertilise the rooftops.
Empower urban quarters.
Focus on The mosques.
Free water for all (again).
Utilise local resources.
Encourage local crafts.
Waste recycled.

Aqueduct = oasis = school = garden = shaded routes and courts = suq

sow the seeds, let the roots take hold.

Cairo cooled!!!!!

From Urban Desert to Urban oasis.

Samia Chaudhry
Vishal Shah
Nick Rogers
Nick Sinden


COOLING CAIRO: From Urban Desert to Urban Oasis
Cairo is a City in the Extreme! Extremes of climate and geography, vibrant life and productivity, decay and waste, vast spaces and overcrowding, vast wealth and abject poverty, luscious greens and filthy greys, unbreathable air, undrinkable water, unbearable heat, excitement and danger, strict controls, complete anarchy, and traffic!
Cairo is an ancient City founded on a Sustainable Legacy! The Ancient Egyptians mastered the art of living in the extreme, taming a harsh landscape and establishing a way of life and living off the land that has prevailed for centuries – ‘sustainability’ is an ancient invention!
Cairo is a modern City that grows like a Cancer! Inflicted by every modern disease its environment is in terminal decline. Trapped within a desert it grows in on itself destroying what has sustained it for centuries and creating vast urban deserts. Where there were once farms, are now disfiguring masses of concrete and brick set in wastelands with displaced communities living off the detritus of the city.
Cairo exhibits every ‘Global Issue’ on every Street Corner!
THE PROJECT
The study is set within the framework of a design atelier focused on “Sustainable Cities” and is underpinned by collaboration between architects, landscape architects, environmental sciences, green engineering, and English and Egyptian Architecture Schools. Cooperative teamwork is key!
Starting with the Particular and Peculiar Circumstances of the culture and environment, jointly working with Egyptian students, to explore, experience, record and explain a number of urban typologies and conditions. Cooperative teamwork is key!
Applying Universal Paradigms to each of these local situations places the issues in a global context where the binding elements and common denominators are climate change, over population, diminishing natural resources, food, water, waste, power, and the consumption of land for building – it’s an ecological issue.
Reinventing Sustainable Ways draws on established traditions, skills and methods but merges them with new technologies and with modern inventiveness: A future vision of Cairo that builds on the familiar landscapes and architecture but adapts them in the light of contemporary needs, pressures, problems and opportunities. Cooperative teamwork is key!

Tutor(s)
Mr Alistair Barr

Roger Seijo

2008
• Page Hits: 10108         • Entry Date: 25 July 2008         • Last Update: 16 September 2008