A Social Construct for Islamic (Historic) Cairo
Modern Cairo (al-Qahira in Arabic which means the “Victorious”) was founded as the imperial city to a conquering army in 969 AD, at the head of location where the Nile splits into its two main branches. It began as a walled royal compound with highly organized palaces, parade grounds, and lush gardens.
However, within 200 years of its founding and given the fall of its conquering dynasty, Cairo rapidly morphed into the medieval social fabric that largely exists today. At its height in power and wealth in the mid 1930’s, Medieval Cairo was the largest cosmopolitan city in the world, boasting a population of over 500,000 people inside its walls and acted as the center for all trade as it moved from the orient to Europe and the West. The fabric of the Islamic metropolis significantly crystallized within a 100 year period into a complex network of social, economic, religious and cultural network. The historic district of Cairo today is a residue of those relationships, most of which still operate much the same as they did 1000 years ago, upon its founding.
Modern metropolitan Cairo´s growth has far exceeded its medieval numbers and is currently the largest city, in both Africa and the Middle East with a population of over 15 million people. Cairo proper has a density of over 90,000 people per square mile and is suffocating from hyper congestion of every type.
Modern Predicament: Horizontal congestion, lack of vertical density, and the social patterns
The current remarkable state of contemporary Cairo is paradoxically defined by hyper horizontal congestion as one of the single densest cities in the world. While there is an almost complete absence of structures less than 3 stories, there also exist a very low percentage of buildings exceeding 10 to 12 stories, city wide, with typically lower structures in the historic district. A rare exception to this is The Cairo Tower, which is a 187 meter infrastructural telecommunication tower built in 1961. At 187 meters, it is the tallest all concrete (i.e. no steel columns or frames) in the world and stands as a modern landmark in a skyline otherwise singly dominated by thousands of minarets built over the previous 1000 years.
While the most obvious device to deal with horizontal congestion is the skyscraper typology, it is almost never implemented by the Cairene population. Its standard spatial organization and normative mode of circulation is at direct odds with the informal interactions that have been concretized over the previous millennium.
Medieval Complexity: A study in the historic fabric and religious institutions
At the apex of wealth and power of medieval Cairo’s Mamaluk Sultans, the city fabric went through its most spectacular period of monument building, growth, and crystallization. Careful examination of historic city reveals that there is no absolute way in which the medieval complexity can be directed or given a set of guiding rules. Instead, all growth happens by way of few absolute “Certainties” supplemented in a symbiotic way with a significant number of “Tendencies” which occur as a resultant of forces, many of which are driven by the certainties.
In Islamic cities of historic nature, the construction of mosques acts as a “Certainty” operation in the fabric. All mosques by Islamic law are required to face toward Mecca. When constructing mosques, the fabric is removed, the mosques constructed with its appropriate orientation, and afterwards, over a period of time, the fabric grows back around the newly constructed “certainty”. The type and configuration of fabric is vaguely regulated and responds exclusively to symbiotic forces at the moment. They become a construction of “Tendency”.
When looking at the mosque itself specifically from the Mamaluk medieval period, it is easily identifiable that the constructions themselves were first typologies of complex cross programming of both civil and religious lives governed by a theocracy. The mosque complex of Sultan Hassan completed in 1363 was the most massive structure of its time and housed in addition to the religious activities of the day, 4 schools, a dormitory for 400 people, a hospital, and an orphanage. The massive construction also contained infrastructural works such as a water tower that helped maintain the population. A separate room was also set aside as the mausoleum for the patron of the building.
When analyzing “Certainties” and “Tendencies” of built fabric along with an in-depth programming of the medieval mosque complex, there arises opportunities to respond to Cairo’s hyper congestion via a mechanism of medieval morphology that is responsive to both the informal relationships, complex social patterns, and the trajectory of time.
Proposed Tower
The skyscraper proposition is to develop a programmed infrastructure (not dissimilar to the “Cairo Tower”) that strategically places contemporary “Certainties” such as a mosque, madrassa, secular schools, library, hospital, and crypt throughout the framework. Once the certainties are established, the informal “Tendencies” will take over and infill the infrastructure. The proposed project represents a speculative undermined growth cycle of 100 years, where tendencies will infill the tower and help alleviate the horizontal congestion.