Architecture and Urbanism in the Middle East

gaged in the design of various historicist styles to satisfy the growing

demand for a contemporary Islamic architecture. The examples range

from romantic mélanges, which freely re-interpret historical motifs, to

the often arbitrary usage of forms detached from their historical and

geographic contexts, to the rational, abstracted, and at times minimal-

ist projects of architects trained in the modern tradition.

However, the most significant and alarming recent development is the
city’s ruralization, which gives the old metropolis the appearance of a
conglomerate of contiguous villages, cut off from civic authorities and
living by their own economic rules and behavioral codes. (Fig. 6) The cos-
mopolitan quality of the architecture of modern Cairo has been slowly
deteriorating under the pressure of a severe population explosion and
heavy rural emigration accompanied by a mixture of official neglect and
corruption, a greedy and speculative real estate market, and chaotic zon-
ing and overbuilding practices.
(Fig. 7) The other side of the coin
is represented by the numerous
“New Cities” growing around Cairo on the edge of the desert and catering to a new class
of entrepreneurs and beneficiaries of the unrestrained laissez faire policies initiated by
the late President Anwar Sadat and continued by President Husni Mubarak. Their ar-
chitecture displays an eclectic collection of post-modern or revivalist motifs distorted
through a Disneyesque vision of contemporary suburban living in the West. (Fig. 8) Thus
as the city loses its modern and slowly evolved architectural identity, its new suburbs ac-
quire a consumerist, neo-
liberal, and globalized
new identity that has no
local flavor. (Fig. 9)

Rabbat...

Fig. 5: New Gourna village

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 9