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Water flows, urban streams, and cultural torrents

Cairo: the whirling hub

After Venice (2006) and Istanbul (2007), DS10 explores a third city at the crossroads of Islamic and Western culture. Known in old times as the city of a thousand minarets and hundred domes, of countless Ottoman mosques, madrasas, Sufi institutions, kuttabs (religious elementary schools), sabils (fountains), shrines and hospitals, Egypt’s capital city Cairo still preserves its millennia-ancient flair.

This year’s theme revolves around the notion of fluid conditions, which in Cairo can be interpreted in a variety of manners. The Nile, one of the biggest rivers in the world, represents an extraordinary water reservoir with a hydrological flow that has attracted to its margins different cultures from antiquity to our days, some of which have created the most important civilizations of our human history. Cairo is nowadays a 17 million whirling hub with urban streams that are of unparallel richness, density and complexity. Yet its infrastructure is prepared for 4 millions only. But Cairo is also one of those cities in which the cultural torrents of civilization have often been exposed in the most dramatic manner. In a time of extreme religious confrontations between the Western and Islamic world, it has again a decisive importance in the future of world politics.

The aim of the year is to look at these critical issues, interpreting flows in environmental, urban and cultural terms. Students are asked to address local and global policies, traditions and cultures, proposing a project to be submitted to the 7th IAHH international Student Design Competition 2009: Sustainable Development and Revitalization of Transit Hubs.