We saw last week how downtown Cairo was designed along the lines of the Paris of le Baron Haussmann. This part of Cairo has retained its style and flavor over time. However, if we compare the evolution of Cairo to that of Paris since the time of Khedive Ismail and Baron Haussmann in the middle of the nineteenth century, we will notice that it has been very different.
Since the time of Baron Haussmann, Paris has stayed within its borders which are defined by the Ring Road or “Boulevard Périphérique”, while Cairo of Ismail Pasha – downtown Cairo (or the Ismailia district as it was then called) – has expanded dramatically.
Other districts were soon added, like el-Tawfiqiya (named after Tawfik Pasha), el-Abbasia (named after Khedive Abbas), Heliopolis (developed in the early twentieth century), Garden City (the 1920s), El Nasr city (the 1960s) and finally Mohandeseen (the 1970s), which started as small villas which were swiftly replaced by high rises.
Meanwhile, the downtown area of Cairo has preserved, to a great extent, its fabric and integrity. The Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage launched a programme to document the architectural heritage of Cairo, using topographical information to position buildings on accurate digital map.
This digital map was fed into a database containing different information about each building, such as the address, district, the years of construction, architectural style, and name of the architect and use of the building. Multimedia displays were added to the database, showing recent pictures of the buildings, with a ‘ zooming-in’ facility, as well as a set of old pictures showing the building as they were up to a century ago.
The system also allows you to see the architectural details of the buildings, such as windows, doors, domes, columns,…etc.
You can use the system to search, for example, for all the buildings designed by a certain architect or buildings that were constructed during a certain decade, buildings belonging to a certain architectural style or buildings in specific districts across the city, as well as for viewing their different architectural elements. An additional feature of the system is a panoramic view of the different squares in the area, such as Talat Harb and Moustafa Kamel, as well as three-dimensional views of some of the buildings.
The documentation started with the down town area, before moving to other districts in the capital, such as Zamalek and el-Abbasia. It then moved further afield to places like el-Mansoura in the Delta and Port Said on the North Coast.
