The Preservation of Cairo’s cultural architecture
The older layers of Cairo, its mosques, courtyards, narrow alleys, and early neighborhoods have shaped the way people conceive and understand Cairo. This makes you wonder how a city keeps the cultural architecture up to date. It is a world of contrasts, some of the former buildings being juxtaposed with new ones, and a set of two architectural styles from centuries far apart, somehow coming together in the same view. The most obvious instance of this is the Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hasan, the contemporary Egyptian religious structure. The mosque initially appears traditional, though it seems deeply grounded in centuries as old as the Islamic architecture that defines much of Egypt’s visual identity. But materials and building, including their construction, present a very different story. The mosque, which has no traditional heavy stone or ancient style masonry, has been constructed using modern reinforced concrete and engineering techniques to give its forms a unique curved appearance, creating a sense of modernity for the space, which comes through but feels rather well-worn and rooted in the architectural history of Egypt. The Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hasan respects tradition not by emulating the past but by challenging it with contemporary construction techniques. It demonstrates the way a building can be historically meaningful even if it wasn’t built historically. The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), at the other end of the Cairo spectrum of architecture. Where the Basuna Mosque combines old and new with form and texture, GEM expresses the relationship of past and present through scale and presence. The museum doesn’t seek to reproduce ancient Egyptian buildings, but it does engage with them. Despite being quite modern in terms of design throughout, the triangular geometry, massive stone surfaces, and immense open plaza convey some timelessness in the building. GEM’s location near the Giza Pyramids is another deliberate visual linkage point, an ancient awe and a contemporary cultural monument in the same stretch of space. And in doing so, GEM is part of a larger preservation tale in Cairo, not that of the preservation of older buildings, but that of a new architectural design of Egypt’s past. These two sites offer two contrasting methods of coping, which Cairo uses to negotiate conflict between preservation and modernization. You have projects like The Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hasan, which reflects on the traditional visual language but also applies contemporary style to the architecture. On the other hand, you have these giant cultural complexes like GEM that brought such daring contemporary architecture and still kept Egypt’s historical identity by making a pyramid structure. But both methods suggest a city that still wants to keep its architectural roots.