Showing posts with label cairo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cairo. Show all posts

Friday, October 31, 2008

Thesis site: Mamluk Cairo

The following are a series of diagrams, displayed during the A01 thesis meeting (10/20/2008), that start to document and diagram the site in an objective manner.




The above diagram is a plan of Mamluk Cairo as it stands in the beginning of the 21st century, compiled from Nicholas Warner's Monument of Historic Cairo .



The above diagram highlights major traffic axis within the city, creating a distinction between pedestrian and automobile traffic. It should be noted that although el Mu'izz street is highlighted as autombile street, automobile access is highly regulated and considered very light to make it more pedestrian friendly.





The next diagram highlights the various building types and uses within the historic city. It should be noted that the diagram is incomplete; it was compiled by limited amount of information that I have, and will be added onto within this thesis year. Purple marks the Relgious use, Green the leisure use, Blue the educational use, Brown the municipal / defense use, and Red marks the commercial use. The uncolored buildings are meant to be residential use at this point.




The above series distuingshes between the various time periods where the buildings were erected. Starting with the Fatimid Period (969-1174), the Ayubbid Period (1174-1257), the Bahri Mamluk period (1257-1392), the Circassin Mamluk period (1392-1517), the Ottoman period (1517-1805), the Mohamed Ali period (1805-1956), and the Post-Revolution period (1956-present). The monuments highlighted in bright blue depicts the Fatimid Period, while the bright orange depicts the Post-Revolution period.



The next two diagrams deal with acoustic space. It was mentioned that Cairo was planned out so that each individual house would be in hearing reach to the mosque's call to prayer. This diagram tests this claim. The small orange dots marks the spot of the minarets within the city, while the large faded yellow circles maps out the threshold of where the call to prayer would be hold, meaning anything outside that circle wont hear the mosque's call to prayer. The diagram was based on a simple physics equation on the intensity of sound: each time the distance is doubled, the intensity level is divided by four. Knowing that any sound made by a human being can not exceed 80dB (without amplification), the outer large circle mark the point where the sound has reached 20dB (audible whisper).

Interestingly enough, there were a few patches of space that are not within audible reach to the call to prayer. At first, I was disapointed that the theory would therefore by false. However, if you look closely to the map, you would notice that the eastern area is a post revolution grid addition to the city, near the southwestern corner is a Mohamed Ali extention (emulating Hausmann's Paris), and the western part of the city includes a number of Synogoges, which leads me to believe that the area was Cairo's Jewish quarters.



The following diagram is similar to the one before, but it focuses more on the intensity of the mosque clusters. Notice how the cluster is intensified arround both the Qalawun / Barquq complex and arround the Rifa'i / Sultan Hassan mosques near the citadel.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

architecture: music, city, and culture

Below are the posters that were presented during thesis fair at the architecture school (september 4-5 2008).



Wednesday, September 10, 2008

sounds of cairo

"We are usually more touched by what we hear than what we see. The sound of rain pelting against leaves, the roll of thunder, the whistling of wind in tall grass, and the anguished cry excite us to a degree that visual imagery can seldom match. Music is for most people a stronger emotional experience than looking at pictures for scenery... Partly, perhaps, because we cannot close our ears as we can our eyes. We feel more Vulnerable to sound. " - Murray Schafer

" (I propose) a method of design based purely on sounds of site. The ultimate goal is that sensitizing the designer to the contextual soundscape culminates in an awareness of all the sensory and supra-sensory perceptual aspects of the site not only as a source of inspiration and tool for design but also as a means of creating spaces that in turn fully engage the perceptual capacities of the user." - Kourosh Mavash

Both Schafer and Mavash have called for soundscaping and sound analysis to be an integral part of the architecture design process. In Mavash's paper SITE + SOUND : SPACE (presented in the Architecture|Music|Acoustics International Cross-Disciplinary Conference; Ryerson Univeristy, Toronto, Canada; 8-10 June, 2006), a number of representational methods are listed to help instigate the design process:
Contextual Sound Piece: a recording of the aural experience of space, letting the aural elements described the space.  
Spatial Sound Instrument: walkthrough instrument to regenerate sounds of the site
Sound Collage: assemblage of aural media (sounds, songs, words, music...etc) to describe elements within the site
Interpretive Sound Piece: free interpretation of site through composed sound pieces
Associative Sound Piece: explorative use of vibrations (inaudible sounds) to describe the site.

The following are contextual sound pieces taken in various locations in Cairo. Unfortunately the quality isn't as pristine as I would have hoped. If my thesis does end up going in this direction, better samples will be gathered during my visit to Cairo this winter. You might want to put on headphones for this one.



In the courtyard of Mohamed Ali Mosque



Underneath the dome of Mohamed Ali Mosque

On el Mu'izz street, infront of al Hakim mosque

On el Mu'izz street, infront of of mosque and sabil-kuttab of Sulayman Agha al-Silahdar

On el Mu'izz street, between al-Silahdar complex and Qalaqun complex