25 November 2017 (TBC) | Book Launch and Exhibition
American University in Cairo and Art-el-Lewa, Egypt.
Edited by Marc Angélil and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes in collaboration with Something Fantastic and CLUSTER (Ruby Press, Berlin),
Focused on urban development of the Egyptian capital, the MAS Urban Design explored the so-called informal districts of Cairo with the publication Housing Cairo: The (Informal) Response (Best Architecture Book DAM 2016). Approximately 60 percent of the population of Africa’s biggest city lives in socalled informal housing, typically five-to-ten-story concreteand- brick-infill structures built without permits in the desert or on former agricultural land. As the book argues, Cairo’s informal response to housing needs is not a marginal phenomenon, but rather an intelligent, optimized answer to planning incapacities – an answer that architects and planners should themselves be participating in.
Organisation
Institute for Urban Design
Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, Marc Angélil
Contact: Charlotte Malterre-Barthes