was a service alleyway surrounded by two high buildings
and faced with one of the oldest Jewish synagogues in Cairo.
The fact that the passage was facing the synagogue made it
difficult for the space to accommodate any kind of activities
due to the sensitive nature of the building and the possibility
for terrorist attacks, which enforces security personnel all the
time in the passage to control the area. However, after the
uprising in 2011, the state was very weak and there was a
very empowered sense of community, and people were
trying to reclaim the streets and change their settings. This
general atmosphere encouraged many private initiatives to
start discussing how to take advantage of the current situation of control suspension. CLUSTER (Cairo Laboratory for
Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research) was
one of the initiatives that started looking at the passage and
invested time and efforts on redefining the unique features of
the passage and how they can pave the way for the people to
reclaim it in the most sustainable manner.
As you walk you have to negotiate your right to the street, from
a gender perspective, from a class perspective, from a culture
perspective. There are different frames of references for what
you can and cannot do, it is not necessarily what the law says.
There are multiple layers of order that govern Nagati,
Co-founder of CLUSTER (Matroos 2017)
4.1.1 The Initiative
Passageways in downtown are spaces between buildings that
connect the main streets that located off the main channels of
traffic and operate as hubs for competing interests and claims
to space. Viewed together, they offer an opportunity to
re-envision downtown as a network of 100 to 150 pathways
housing commerce and entertainment. They also offer a
counterpoint to the traffic and street grid and may serve as a
stage for periodic artistic and cultural programs, such as
book fairs, children’s festivals, flea markets and even bike
ways and greenways (Nagati and Stryker Eds. 2016).
In 2011, a team of academics consisted of Omar Nagati,
Jan Braker and Bedour Braker started a design course at
MSA University focusing on the ‘In-Between’ spaces of
downtown Cairo. The team led a group of 30 students to
explore the inner spaces and forgotten alleys of the area and
came up with an extensive array of solutions that would
enhance the condition of those passages and lead to more
integral interaction between the users.
The outstanding outcome encouraged Nagati, three years
later in 2014 to work more intensively with his CLUSTER
team to realize some of those proposals. They chose two
forgotten passages and one of them was Kodak Alleyway
(Matroos 2017).
4.1.2 The Intent
In 2014, CLUSTER was supported by two Danish organizations—Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute (DEDI) and the
Center for Culture and Development (CKU)—to establish a
workshop including Egyptian and Danish teams of artists
and architects. Their objective was to engage stakeholders
and residents in a series of discussions and decision-making
to reach the best approach for revitalizing the dead street.
The result was a design theme that promotes a safer and
accessible space through redefining the public spaces of
Downtown as catalysts for more diverse and inclusive
interaction between people from different backgrounds. The
outcome for Kodak was selected by a juried review and it
was referred to as the ‘Green Oasis’, Fig. 5.
‘The design is fairly simple’, explains Nagati. We are
using the passageways concept to bring nature back into
Downtown. So, we added a little bit of a green oasis or an
urban garden. The idea is to try to mediate the public and
private sphere. As you can see in Cairo, there is not only a
lot of spill over from shops onto the street but also street
vendors and informal traffic organization. So, the public and
private domain are not very clearly demarcated, unlike in
Northern Europe for example, (Matroos 2017).
4.1.3 The Path
CLUSTER undertook the design development and implementation of the concept, further adapting it to the needs of
the local community and various stakeholders. The implementation was completed and the newly designed passage
was inaugurated in January 2015. They have faced a number
of challenges concerning the strategy to manage and
acknowledge the needs of the stakeholders through negotiations without compromising design integrity (Nagati and
Stryker Eds. 2016).
The team then spent an entire summer acquiring the
necessary permits by seven relevant local and municipal
authorities. It was a challenge to convince different authorities with some of the design ideas like installing benches
and lighting due to security reasons since the street was
facing the Jewish Synagogue.
In their report, CLUSTER explained how difficult it was to
proceed with the construction flow on-site. They mentioned
that some of the design details were not accepted by different
parties, for instance, the floor tiling and the benches. The
objection was the possibility of soliciting certain undesirable
actions within the street, a necessity to reach a common
ground to persuade the different local stakeholders was clear
to the team in order to smoothly proceed with the implementation of the project. Some stakeholders also expressed
their concerns regarding making the street open and uncontrolled, which will eventually lead to unpredictable encounters. Contrary to those conventional assumptions, and
according to many writings by Jane Jacobs in the 1960s, a
welcoming public space frequented by as many people and
users as possible can make the space the safest.
138
S. Ashour and B. Braker
and faced with one of the oldest Jewish synagogues in Cairo.
The fact that the passage was facing the synagogue made it
difficult for the space to accommodate any kind of activities
due to the sensitive nature of the building and the possibility
for terrorist attacks, which enforces security personnel all the
time in the passage to control the area. However, after the
uprising in 2011, the state was very weak and there was a
very empowered sense of community, and people were
trying to reclaim the streets and change their settings. This
general atmosphere encouraged many private initiatives to
start discussing how to take advantage of the current situation of control suspension. CLUSTER (Cairo Laboratory for
Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research) was
one of the initiatives that started looking at the passage and
invested time and efforts on redefining the unique features of
the passage and how they can pave the way for the people to
reclaim it in the most sustainable manner.
As you walk you have to negotiate your right to the street, from
a gender perspective, from a class perspective, from a culture
perspective. There are different frames of references for what
you can and cannot do, it is not necessarily what the law says.
There are multiple layers of order that govern Nagati,
Co-founder of CLUSTER (Matroos 2017)
4.1.1 The Initiative
Passageways in downtown are spaces between buildings that
connect the main streets that located off the main channels of
traffic and operate as hubs for competing interests and claims
to space. Viewed together, they offer an opportunity to
re-envision downtown as a network of 100 to 150 pathways
housing commerce and entertainment. They also offer a
counterpoint to the traffic and street grid and may serve as a
stage for periodic artistic and cultural programs, such as
book fairs, children’s festivals, flea markets and even bike
ways and greenways (Nagati and Stryker Eds. 2016).
In 2011, a team of academics consisted of Omar Nagati,
Jan Braker and Bedour Braker started a design course at
MSA University focusing on the ‘In-Between’ spaces of
downtown Cairo. The team led a group of 30 students to
explore the inner spaces and forgotten alleys of the area and
came up with an extensive array of solutions that would
enhance the condition of those passages and lead to more
integral interaction between the users.
The outstanding outcome encouraged Nagati, three years
later in 2014 to work more intensively with his CLUSTER
team to realize some of those proposals. They chose two
forgotten passages and one of them was Kodak Alleyway
(Matroos 2017).
4.1.2 The Intent
In 2014, CLUSTER was supported by two Danish organizations—Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute (DEDI) and the
Center for Culture and Development (CKU)—to establish a
workshop including Egyptian and Danish teams of artists
and architects. Their objective was to engage stakeholders
and residents in a series of discussions and decision-making
to reach the best approach for revitalizing the dead street.
The result was a design theme that promotes a safer and
accessible space through redefining the public spaces of
Downtown as catalysts for more diverse and inclusive
interaction between people from different backgrounds. The
outcome for Kodak was selected by a juried review and it
was referred to as the ‘Green Oasis’, Fig. 5.
‘The design is fairly simple’, explains Nagati. We are
using the passageways concept to bring nature back into
Downtown. So, we added a little bit of a green oasis or an
urban garden. The idea is to try to mediate the public and
private sphere. As you can see in Cairo, there is not only a
lot of spill over from shops onto the street but also street
vendors and informal traffic organization. So, the public and
private domain are not very clearly demarcated, unlike in
Northern Europe for example, (Matroos 2017).
4.1.3 The Path
CLUSTER undertook the design development and implementation of the concept, further adapting it to the needs of
the local community and various stakeholders. The implementation was completed and the newly designed passage
was inaugurated in January 2015. They have faced a number
of challenges concerning the strategy to manage and
acknowledge the needs of the stakeholders through negotiations without compromising design integrity (Nagati and
Stryker Eds. 2016).
The team then spent an entire summer acquiring the
necessary permits by seven relevant local and municipal
authorities. It was a challenge to convince different authorities with some of the design ideas like installing benches
and lighting due to security reasons since the street was
facing the Jewish Synagogue.
In their report, CLUSTER explained how difficult it was to
proceed with the construction flow on-site. They mentioned
that some of the design details were not accepted by different
parties, for instance, the floor tiling and the benches. The
objection was the possibility of soliciting certain undesirable
actions within the street, a necessity to reach a common
ground to persuade the different local stakeholders was clear
to the team in order to smoothly proceed with the implementation of the project. Some stakeholders also expressed
their concerns regarding making the street open and uncontrolled, which will eventually lead to unpredictable encounters. Contrary to those conventional assumptions, and
according to many writings by Jane Jacobs in the 1960s, a
welcoming public space frequented by as many people and
users as possible can make the space the safest.
138
S. Ashour and B. Braker