The heart of the matter

After a long period of neglect, architects and urbanists are taking an interest in downtown Cairo. Fayza Hassan attends a round-table discussion and worries about the area's future
"Many of the buildings designed and constructed in Cairo in the 19th and early 20th centuries drew upon the beauty and coherence of Italian Renaissance buildings."
"Delicate balconies with exclusive wrought iron work and ornate cantilevers, marble steps and entrances, molded window and door surrounds added the distinctive French touches."
Downtown Cairo forms a triangle, its three furthest points situated at Al-Tahrir Square, Bab Al-Hadid and Abdin. It is in this part of the city, bordering the old historical quarters, that Khedive Ismail applied the lessons he thought he had learned during his lengthy stay in Europe. He wanted Cairo to equal Paris in splendour and this poorly developed part of the city seemed an ideal playground for his initiatives.
He had already attempted to build up the area starting in 1863, albeit with mixed results. As the opening of the Suez Canal loomed supreme in his mind upon his return and considering the little enthusiasm previously shown by real estate investors to follow his lead, he conceived the scheme of subdividing the area and giving away plots of land to all those who were prepared to build on them in the shortest delays. His capital would be an object of surprise and delight to all the heads of state and prestigious guests he had invited to attend the momentous opening of the controversial waterway. As we know, he fell short of his aim but managed an acceptable cosmetic job, enough anyway to allow the magnificent festivities to impress most of his visitors. Construction activities only picked up after 1871, reaching their apogee in 1907, a year that witnessed an unprecedented building boom. At this time only did the foreign elite take an active interest and begin to invest heavily in Ismailyia, as this quarter was then known.
Ismail had relied on foreign architects for his projects of urbanisation. French, Italians, Austrians and Germans came in droves, some settling permanently in Egypt, where the market was favourable to the exercise of their profession. The maligned khedive's successors blamed him for his extravagance but nevertheless followed suit, so that during the first part of the 20th century, Ismailyia was built mainly by Europeans in a pleasant mix of art deco, art nouveau, baroque and, a little later, neo-Islamic styles. "Many of the buildings designed and constructed by Italians in Cairo in the 19th and early 20th centuries drew upon the beauty and coherence of Italian Renaissance buildings: ground floors with heavy stone facing or its equivalent in plaster, the upper story with Tuscan columns or ionic pilasters and pedimented windows," writes Cynthia Mintti in Paris Along The Nile (AUC Press, 1999).
She adds that Italian architects who had participated in the renovation of Islamic monuments introduced Islamic motifs in their later work. Cairo also benefited from the influence of the French baroque style, which was used with panache in many downtown buildings as well as in Garden City and the new, opulent quarter of Al-Daher. "Delicate balconies with extensive wrought iron work and ornate cantilevers, marbles steps and entrances, molded window and door surrounds added the distinctive French touches," she comments.
Among the architects who contributed to the establishment of downtown Cairo were some Egyptians, but most were expatriates, she confirms. Names like Antonio Lasciac (architect in chief of the khedive's palaces) Fahmi Riad, Edouard Luledjian, Nubar Kevorkian, Giuseppe Mazza, Antoine Backh, Edward Matasek, Garo Balian and Max Edrei come to mind.
Banks, insurance companies and wealthy individuals invested in blocks of flats. The very luxurious apartments were then rented out as offices or private dwellings to a cosmopolitan elite careful to preserve the buildings in tiptop shape.
With the development of suburbs, the same architects were called upon to apply their talents to the construction of impressive villas and quaint, four-storey apartment buildings in the new quarters. Many downtown tenants, following the trend, abandoned their now less fashionable address or transformed their flats into well appointed offices for their own use or as an investment and moved to Doqqi, Garden City, Heliopolis or Maadi.
By the 1940s, Ismailyia had become an elegant business district, with only a minority of families, usually the less affluent, electing to stay on. Elegant boutiques provided shade with their colourful awnings to a selective clientele who preferred shopping in Cairo rather than in any European capital, while physicians, dentists, lawyers and accountants vied for clinics and offices in such prestigious surroundings.
The situation changed drastically with the revolution: the 1956 exodus of the foreign community hit hard at the heart of the area. For almost half a century, it went into sleep mode, its activity diminished, its boutiques no longer attracting the elite and its apartments taken over by professionals only for convenience or because they could not afford to establish their practices in the more fashionable suburbs. This trend was accelerated during the Sadat regime, as billboards advertising the skills of lawyers, doctors, engineers and developers replaced the erstwhile elegant bronze plaques and multiplied in such numbers and size that they completely disfigured downtown's delicately ornamented façades. Established shops changed hands, while new ones sprouted in every nook and cranny, their owners indulging in their own decorating schemes in the absence of clear laws forbidding such unfortunate initiatives. Deprived of the love and care of their original owners and tenants, the buildings soon deteriorated beyond recognition. Those who could afford to move away did so quickly and a new transient population took over the now greatly subdivided majestic flats.
It is only in the 1990s that a few architects, intellectuals and researchers rediscovered the beauty of downtown Cairo and recognised that, like an old belle, it still had des beaux restes.
How could one save the little that remained, though? How could one prevent the beautiful buildings from being pulled down and replaced by shopping malls and multiple-storey car-parks? How could the present owners or tenants be forced to carry out the necessary repairs, bearing in mind the absence of clear legislation assigning responsibility? How could the lavishly decorated, now grimy and crumbling façades be saved?
"Embellishments were especially easy to add in Cairo," writes Mintti, "being made largely of hollow plaster of Paris, an innovation brought to Cairo by Italians. In less hospitable climates... architectural ornamentation is usually part of the stone masonry or terra cotta structure. Hollow plaster casts allowed architects and their clientele in Cairo to reproduce decorations cheaply and liberally, quite literally gluing them on a building's façade. It seemed like a good idea at the time: the dry, warm climate of Egypt accommodated the plaster decoration for several decades, but now their deterioration is sadly evident." Car exhaust fumes have added their deadly effect to the normal and sometimes intentional wear and tear to which the buildings, misused and deprived of any care, have suffered. Could they ever be returned to their past state?
All these questions and more were posed during a lively meeting which took place last week at the Café Riche, organised in the context of Les Français aiment le Caire, a month-long event sponsored by the French embassy and the French Cultural Centre. Urbanist Galila El-Qadi, who led the discussion, pointed out to an attentive audience a few of the many problems currently plaguing downtown Cairo. The response of the public -- many of them long-time dwellers of the area -- that packed the old, recently renovated café was impressive.
The excessive flow of traffic passing through the once orderly streets, originally constructed to accommodate horse-drawn carriages, was paramount to the audience. It was bad enough now, someone mentioned, but what will happen when Al-Azhar tunnel is completed and the traffic is detoured towards Al-Gomhouriya Street? How will one cope with the inevitable congestion?
Parking is also a major and seemingly never-ending headache, featuring cars so crammed on the streets and footpaths that pedestrians have trouble moving about. Many attempts have been made to alleviate the situation, but have yielded no results. It was obvious from the discussion that there is no ready remedy in sight. While permanent inhabitants may have welcomed the establishment of a pedestrian area in Al-Alfi Street and around the Bourse, there were complaints that at the Bourse in particular, patrons were given special parking privileges within the restricted area. An architect who had been involved in the project confirmed that the sponsors of the restoration had demanded and obtained preferential treatment for their vehicles. Suppliers, on the other hand, were being penalised, as it was now impossible for them to load and unload their merchandises at the doorstep of shops in Al-Alfi Street or near the Bourse. Forbidden to stop or access the restricted passage, they went around the block several times before being able to take advantage of the inattention of a traffic policeman to dump their goods on the footpath and escape.
The misuse of terraces and roofs, whereby illegal construction has been added to accommodate both people and poultry, was touched upon, albeit with little result. In most cases the occupants of building tops are not ordinary squatters but have been given regular contracts, making their eviction impossible. There are no known laws preventing them from keeping chickens or watching television in the open air and regaling the whole neighbourhood with the reverberating blast of the volume turned up to full capacity.
The poor condition of footpaths was another sore point. Driving and parking may be impossible, but walking was life-threatening, a voice at the back of the café quipped. More than anything else, perhaps, the assembly was irked by the general absence of cleanliness of courtyards, the poor maintenance of buildings, the neglect of entrances and elevators and the fact that repairs would not soon be carried out. Some buildings have been deprived of elevators for years. Others have their entrance blocked by semi-itinerant vendors, while many occupants cannot open the back door of their apartments because of the stench of the garbage dumped on the stairs by other, less delicate dwellers.
El-Qadi explained that owners who had been subjected for a long time to rent control had been loath to spend money on repairs or cleanliness, as their initial investment had yielded no profits for years. Now, however, with the new rent liberalisation policy, a case could be made -- and owners made responsible -- for the hygiene and maintenance of properties. Unfortunately, she added, the most beautiful buildings were owned by insurance companies and they have confined their efforts to resurfacing their façades, which, as everyone had noticed, was an unmitigated disaster.
It is a well known fact that Cairo's governor, Abdel-Rehim Shehata, had granted advertisement permits to large companies on the condition that they would repaint the building over which they placed their billboards. Stemming from a good intention, the results had been devastating, with cheap paint being slapped indiscriminately by unskilled workers on cut stone, brick and stucco alike. Maryse Hilal, owner of the famous downtown Estoril restaurant and one of the staunchest defenders of downtown Cairo, pointed out that the Assicurazioni Generali building, constructed by Lasciac in cut stone, had also been graced with a coat of paint. She feared, with good reason, that the stone would not fare well under this incongruous embellishment.
This building, like most in downtown Cairo, has a history that goes back to the beginning of the 20th century:
The successful Assicurazioni Generali began to consolidate their influence in Egypt starting in 1880. They wished to create a landmark that would emphasise their importance. The task was entrusted to Antonio Lasciac, perhaps the most popular among the renowned Italian architects. One can speculate that he was singled out by Ermanno Gentile, one of the Assicurazioni directors, for his skills in allying European workmanship to local traditions. Once they had hired the best architect, the Italian directors sought a project that would be both profitable and grandiose. After some consideration, they decided to invest in a block of flats. "The typology that satisfies best the exigencies of land and real estate speculation is that of a building divided into apartments. In addition to the revenue provided by such a project, the Assicurazioni Generali wanted to reinforce the image of the company, in such a way that the investment becomes also an exercise in showmanship, enhanced by the choice of the architect and the style," writes Diana Barillari in Le Caire -- Alexandrie, Architecture européennes 1850-1950 (IFAO, 2001). The archives of this famous insurance company, she adds, indicate that the building was the property of the Assicurazioni Generali since 1908 and that it was "restored and raised in 1911". Lasciac, therefore, was given the task not of erecting a building from scratch but of altering an existing one. It is, however, difficult, writes Barillari, to detect how much of the Lasciac building belongs to the original construction. The façades, presenting a neo-Islamic ornamentation have certainly been designed by Lasciac, she thinks, being quite similar to the ones he used in his own villa in Gorizia. Furthermore, there are many affinities between the Assicurazioni building and the headquarters of Banque Misr, which he built at a later stage, she adds.
El-Qadi had little beyond words of commiseration to add to Hilal's complaint. She could only reiterate that in the absence of legislation, such blunders were sadly unavoidable. In conclusion, the assembly summarised their grievances, commenting that the inhabitants of downtown Cairo were between a rock and a hard place: the total absence of refurbishment signed the death warrant of precious buildings, while irresponsible interventions were not only terribly unsightly, but extremely dangerous. Awareness campaigns and the creation of owner/tenant associations could go a long way in alerting the public to the danger of losing altogether a unique part of Cairo's heritage, but at the present time, non-compliance with the recommendations issued by such informal bodies is regrettably legally unenforceable.
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