Friday 27 November 2009 | 17:00
Venue: Martin-Gropius-Bau, cinema
With Sherif El-Azma (Artist, Kairo), Erik Göngrich (Artist, Berlin), Maria Golia (Author, Kairo), Philipp Misselwitz (Urban Researcher, Istanbul/Berlin) moderated by Bettina Springer (Curator and Urban Researcher, Berlin)
A new city in the desert, about an hour’s drive away from the centre of Cairo, is being built since 2004: New Cairo. Covering a surface of ca. 120 square kilometres, a sea of half-finished buildings surges up which look like a blend of haciendas and colonial-style villas. Originally intended to relieve the narrowness of Cairo, the new city is now turning into a tacky enclave for the upper middle class. What is the role of architecture in such an urban context, how does it define a city? Sherif El-Azma deals with these questions by looking at an architectural model of Cairo that follows subjective principles and psychographic ideas. The presentation will be commented by Erik Göngrich with a statement regarding the symbolism of Istanbul’s architecture and its role in the present-day urban development, and by Maria Golia and Philipp Misselwitz.
On the occasion of the exhibition “Taswir – Pictorial Mappings of Islam and Modernity”