With more and more old buildings being demolished since the revolution, the work of architects-turned-activists in defending the country's architectural heritage is more vital than ever, writes Osama Kamal One of the foremost defenders of Egypt's built heritage is Mohamed Al-Desouki, who teaches in the Arab Academy of Science and Technology in Alexandria, sits on the Heritage Committee of the Alexandria governorate, and runs a blog called "the walls of Alex" (or, in Arabic, godran madina motaaba) as well as a Facebook page called "Save Alex" (enkezu al-iskandaria). "There have been persistent attempts to erase and deface the legacy of Alexandria, and not just the buildings. Entire neighbourhoods have lost their character, including the Latin Quarter [Al-Hayy Al-Latini], Sporting, and Semouha, all of which are areas that used to be very exclusive. Once the city's population grew from half a million to six million people, a lot of buildings were knocked down and residential towers were built in their place, totally changing the character of the place," Al-Desouki said. Part of the problem is that the original plans of the city did not allow for smooth expansion to accommodate the future growth of the city. But the indifference of local developers to the city's legacy is making things worse. In 1987, the late dramatist Osama Anwar Okasha wrote a television series called "The White Flag" (Al-Raya Al-Beida) on this theme. Al-Desouki is fond of this series, which warned that unless action was taken developers would end up demolishing most of the city's historic buildings. "Okasha wrote this series 25 years ago and yet nothing has changed," Al-Desouki said. In the series, there is a building called the Villa Moufid Abul-Ghar, which a businesswoman called Meallema Fadda Al-Meaddawi wishes to demolish. In the fiction, the building is saved by the intervention of conservationists. However, in fact, the villa -- which belonged to former public works minister Osman Pasha Moharram -- was pulled down two years ago. In 1999, Mohamed Awad, one of Alexandria's top heritage experts and director of the Research Centre of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, made a survey of all the historical buildings in the city. An updated version of this survey was produced in 2006 by the Heritage Committee of Alexandria. This should have slowed down the process of demolition, but since last year's revolution the opposite has happened. In the absence of law and order that has marked the past 20 months, the city has lost dozens of historical buildings, including superb examples of period architecture and rare examples of the villas and apartment buildings built 100 or so years ago. The developers, who usually start working at night to avoid a public outcry, use legal loopholes to justify their actions. Sometimes they even hire criminals to take the blame for the destruction of the listed buildings. Meanwhile, conservation activists are up in arms and have staged several vigils to protect major buildings from the pickaxes of the developers. One such vigil was held on 11 June to defend the Villa Aghion in the district of Wabur Al-Mayya. The developers had sent a crew to pull down the villa at 4am. When Awad was told about it, he woke up the governor and the demolition was stopped, though only after the building had lost its irreplaceable period fa��ade. The Villa Aghion was built in 1922 by the French architect Auguste Perret (1874-1954), one of the pioneers of the use of reinforced concrete. Alexandria activists also held a vigil to defend the city's Villa Cicurel against demolition after former prime minister Kamal Al-Ganzouri inexplicably ordered its removal from the heritage list. The art deco Cicurel building was built in the 1920s and was designed by French architects Leon Azema, Jacques Hardy and Max Edrei. Another architectural activist is Shaimaa Ashour, who lectures at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology. She runs the blogspot "keep hunting photos" (mansiyat in Arabic) which focuses on building styles in Egypt over the past two centuries. The blogspot later developed into an electronic newspaper called The Io Weekly, which is updated every Tuesday, runs articles, photos, and videos about Egypt's architectural heritage, monitors current violations against listed buildings and alerts the architectural community to lectures and various events. Ashour's 2005 MA dissertation on "Pioneer Egyptian Architects in the Liberal Period Between the 1919 and 1952 Revolutions" has been published in Arabic by Madbouli, and it contains a wealth of information about the major Egyptian architects who were active in the country's building boom at the turn of the 20th century. According to Ashour, modern Egyptian architects cut their teeth working with European colleagues in the Cairo districts of Heliopolis and Maadi. One early prominent architect was Mahmoud Hussein Pasha Fahmi, who was followed by Mustafa Pasha Fahmi, formerly king Farouk's architect, who used many Islamic motifs in his work. In his wake came Ali Gabr, who favoured European styles and designed the villas of the celebrities of the time, including Abdel-Rahman Hamada, Umm Kolthoum, Al-Badrawi and Safinaz Zul-Fikar. There was also a cohort of architects of Syrian origin that worked in Egypt 100 years ago or so, and this included Charles Ayrout, a Syrian who was influenced by the Dutch school in using yellow and red facing bricks. There was also Antoine Nahhas, another Syrian, who worked mainly in French styles and left his mark on dozens of downtown Cairo buildings. Shaimaa divides Egyptian architects into three groups: those influenced by British styles, those influenced by the French, and those inspired by the traditions of Germany, Switzerland and the US. Those who favoured British styles were architects who received their training in Liverpool and London, where they were influenced by the architectural fashions of the 1920s and 1930s, including modern trends. Members of this group included Ali Gabr, Mohamed Raafat, Sherif Noaman, Mohamed Al-Tawil, Mahmoud Riyad, Mahmoud Hakim, Mustafa Rushdi, Omar Ghabour, Ali Farid, and Tawfik Abdel-Gawwad. Those influence by French styles, and who largely received their training in Paris, included Mustafa Fahmi, Hassan Fathi, Ahmed Sharmi, Ahmed Shaker, Abu Bakr Khairat and Ahmed Sidki. This group of architects had a tendency to fuse Islamic motifs with European styles. The third group, mostly educated in Germany, Switzerland and the US, included Sayed Korayem (who studied in Zurich), Shafik Al-Sadr, Youssef Shafik, Mustafa Shawki and Salah Zeitun (who studied in Illinois). Another architectural activist is Mohamed Al-Shahed, who is currently finishing his PhD at New York University in the US. Al-Shahed created the electronic magazine Cairobserver (Moshahed Al-Qahera in Arabic), which appears in the form of an online newspaper, although one of its issues has appeared in hard copy format thanks to a grant from the British Cultural Centre. Cairobserver covers everything related to modern and contemporary Egyptian architecture, with a special focus on conservation and city-planning issues. Al-Shahed, who has spent most of his life abroad, especially in the US, has more recently been spending his time in Egypt in relation to research on the Egyptian architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries. He rails against those who believe in a dichotomy of European and Egyptian architecture. "Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that some designs were influenced by European styles, these later became totally assimilated and integrated into the Egyptian environment. Some say that Cairo, from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, was a 'copy' of Paris. But what such people don't seem to notice is that the bulk of historic Cairo has remained unchanged since the beginning of the city-planning efforts under Mohamed Ali," Al-Shahed said. Although Paris was largely demolished and rebuilt in the nineteenth century, with the exception of rare architectural landmarks, Cairo has stood the test of time. Some thoroughfares were superimposed onto the old city, but this happened in a "surgical manner" and over several decades, perhaps 40 years or so, according to Al-Shahed. The creation of these thoroughfares, such as the Mohamed Ali and Clot Bey streets, did not change the city's character, but allowed it to evolve, he adds. In Paris, on the other hand Baron Haussmann's designs completely remade the city in the 1860s. He imposed strict regulations for building styles and stated the dimensions and heights of various buildings, down to the sizes of their windows. In Cairo, the rules set out by Ali Pasha Fahmi, the city's chief planner under the khedives Ismail and Tawfik, were more relaxed. Fahmi imposed building specifications, but he had nothing to say about the style of the buildings. This is why Cairo retained its own independent ways. "Cairo was never Paris. It was always itself," Al-Shahed concluded.
