Back to
20th
Century
20
- Historicism in the Twentieth-Century Cairo
| Hasan Fathy (1900-1989): The visionary Egyptian architect and pioneering advocate of revivalism. His buildings adapt selected vernacular examples and recast them through subjective and lyrical interpretations of traditions. | ||
| Riad House: Saqqara Road, Giza, Egypt (1967). | ||
 |
General view of Fuad Riyad house. | |
 |
Exterior view of the dome. | |
 |
Interior view of the dome showing the construction technique. | |
| The "Saqqara Road" house (1980) | ||
 |
The Main facade of the house towards the Saqqara Road. | |
 |
Interior of the main hall under the dome. | |
 |
Interior of one side iwan. | |
| Ramses Wissa Wassef: Another visionary architect with a socio-religious mission that found its expression in the new arts and crafts center that he establsihed and built in stages in the village of Harraniya outisde Cairo on the Saqqara Road. | ||
| The Harraniya Community Center (1957-74): Harraniya | ||
 |
The Harraniya Community Cente side facade. | |
| The House of Ceres Wissa Wassef: Harraniya | ||
| The Museum of Ahmad Mukhtar: Gezira, Cairo (1970s) | ||
 |
General view of the Museum designed by Ramses Wissa Wasef. | |
| The Mar`ashli Church (1970s): | ||
 |
Side facade of the church designed by Ramses Wissa Wasef. | |
| `Abdul al-Wahid al-Wakil: A disciple of Hasan Fathy who freely blends together forms, and even fragments of forms, to create plastic, sculpture -like structures. | ||
| The Hamdy Residence (1979): | ||
 |
Main facade. | |
 |
Interior view of one iwan in the main hall. | |
| `Abd al-Halim Ibrahim `Abd al-Halim: A prominent Egyptian historicits architect who deconstructs historical forms and reuses them in new abstract compositions. | ||
| The Park of al-Hawd al-Marsud (1989): | ||
 |
The Park of al-Hawd al-Marsud. | |
| Historical Background: The last four decades witnessed the resurgence of a historicist movement in architecture in the Islamic world that was influenced by contemporary architectural thinking in the West and fervent searches for cultural identities in the recently formed nation-states. The manifestations of this movement range from the romantic approach to historical precedents, to the free, and often arbitrary, usage of forms detached from their historical and geographic contexts, to the rational, abstracted, and at times minimalist, projects of architects trained in the modern tradition who applied logical and deductive methods to their dealing with history, to the scientific historicism whose proponents classify, analyze, and re-interpret historical examples to justify their uses. | ||