Looming above the affluent Zamalek neighbourhood in the centre of Cairo, the Forte Tower has stood as the tallest building in Egypt for the last 30 years – yet it remains unfinished and abandoned. The result of several years of digging through haphazard archives, Mohamed Elshahed’s guidebook is an intriguing example of the form. It includes 226 buildings, some unfinished, some demolished, some never even built. Many appear to be unremarkable, everyday buildings, not the kind historians would necessarily regard as worthy of veneration. And that’s precisely the point. “The book is not only intended as a sample of Cairo as it is now, but a record of what once was, or could have been,” says Elshahed, a curator and architectural historian who founded the Cairobserver blog. “So much of the city has been demolished before we’ve even discovered and documented it. It means that, despite the generations of development, Cairo is not a place where you can walk around and really feel history, or identify who did what when. It’s so muddled.”
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
More Stories
Trends for African Students Seeking Education Abroad
Floods and Landslides Batter Madagascar
Anyone Interested in East Africa’s Dynamic Urbanisation Process should have this Book
Filling the Gap in Locally Grown Techpreneurs
South Africa has Signed an Agreement to Reintroduce Dozens of Cheetahs in India
Enhancing Trust and Security in Digital Africa
Energy Giant Eni Signed an $8 billion Gas Deal with Libya’s State-run National Oil Corporation
Expectations of the Pope’s Visit to Africa
The First Muslim to Helm South Africa’s Biggest Metropolis
The First Africa Vegan Restaurant Week
Lagos Rising: Meet the African Designers Who are Ushering in a New Guard of Fashion
My Life in Food: Idris Elba on African Cuisine and Cooking with his Mum