Papers by Mona Abdelwahab
De-commemoration of an urban street in Egypt: the case of Gameat-Aldowel-Alarabyia street
Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the “event” of the construction of Naguib Mahfouz... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the “event” of the construction of Naguib Mahfouz Square. Drawing on the memory of Gamaet-Aldowel-AlArabyia Street, it attempts to uncover the socio-cultural structures inherited in the Egyptian urban street. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts Foucauldian discourse on institutions of “knowledge and authority” to approach the power relations between the actors involved. This discourse was constructed through in-depth, unstructured interviews with architects and involved government personnel as well as other archival resources that included national newspapers and magazines. Findings This discourse reflected an institutional controversy between these actors over the perception and design of the Egyptian street, highlighting the alienation of the designer, and the user/lay-people, from the urban institution. Naguib Mahfouz Square presented a considerable deviation from the established norms of street design in Egypt at that tim...
Realizing sensory urban environments: decoding synthetic realities with urban performance simulation
The creation of enjoyable micro urban spaces requires the combination of new concepts with previo... more The creation of enjoyable micro urban spaces requires the combination of new concepts with previous perceptions from experienced spaces. Data analysis and outputs of urban environmental performance simulation softwares are used as a method to present the interaction between predicted physical spatial variations and their impact on micro climate. Various mediums of ‘virtuality’ based on proposed designs are used to communicate design decision impacts to the design team and stakeholders, such as graphs, comparative numerical tables, 3D environmental visualizations, 3D models of the physical spaces and virtual walk throughs. At the design stage, the creation of urban environments ‘is a hybrid art, where the image hardly ever exists without a combined activity’ (Tschumi 1996, p. 257). Finalizing a design decision often depends on expert judgements and previous experiences underpinned by simulated predictions of the sensory performances in terms of thermal comfort, wind, noise and daylight exposure. The inherent technical and scienti c underpinnings of urban performance simulation could not be communicated to the design board without translation; an expert transformation of quantitative data on various human comfort indices into ‘digestible’ and ‘technically defensible’ levels. The practice of urban environmental performance modelling thus presents a continuous oscillation between the abstract and the real; the drawing of physical space and virtual integrations of interpretations of social life; and the space of knowledge and the space of living.
These virtual spaces presented to the teams to visualize the environmental and social impacts of the designed space provide an experiential dynamic space, a cyberspace that helps the designer to materialize, experiment and live through their ideas. Visualization tools still lag behind when it comes to providing real time, interactive and reliable means of communication of environmental conditions in the urban space. This chapter shows how sensory urban environments can be designed and tested before they are built by incorporating layers of environmental urban performance in the early stages of the decision-making process. The ‘monad’ theory can explain the interaction with the virtual in the design boardroom with its oscillations between perceptions and realism. The monad is in an intermediate region introduced by Leibniz to inextricably connect the modern abyss between the abstract and the real, the virtual and the physical. This intermediate region ‘comprises a temporal instance of reality constructed by the monad’, a relation between the physical and the virtual. At the same time there is an in nite number of monads, each of them has its own ‘point of view’ of the physical/virtual (Scruton 2001).
It is acknowledged here that the scienti c nature of urban performance simulation may lead to an ‘omniscient effect’ where recipients of the urban performance environmental simulation data may be overwhelmed by the scienti c nature of the presented visualizations. If the right questions are not asked in the design team, and the limitations of urban performance predictions are not well understood, then major discrepancies between the virtual and real urban space performance predictions will occur in reality.
The blessings of ' non-planning' in Egypt
In this chapter, we aim to re-explore the development of the 'Egyptianized' version of strategic ... more In this chapter, we aim to re-explore the development of the 'Egyptianized' version of strategic planning. We adopt the deconstruction-reading fragment, 'event-context-history', which adopts a relational perspective of space and time. Deconstruction intrinsically works from within the content, the strategic planning. The concept of 'différance' thus emphasises the blurring process between the boundaries inside/ outside the content, and represents 'trace'(s) of content, contextual, and temporal reality. The deconstruction-reading event is both traced by and a trace of the content, the context and involved actors. Accordingly, this helps to identify the structure, the inconsistencies, and the weak and missing points within the content of 'strategic planning in Egypt'. This fragment thus draws on three readings: the context of planning in Egypt, the top-down central institution of decision-making; the 'becoming' of strategic planning, i.e. the process of 'Egyptianization'; and the role of citizen participation, the growing mistrust/ intolerance between the institution and the citizen.
@ 2017 Routledge, Taylor and Francis
The regeneration of Naguib Mahfouz Square, Egypt: in between western and national fantasies
On Analysing Space from a Strategic-Relational Institutionalist Perspective: The Cultural Park for Children in Cairo
Cairo, Khōra and Deconstruction: Towards a Reflexive Reading Place
PhD thesis, Newcastle University , Jan 1, 2011
Cairo, the Egyptian capital, has grown into a complex, multicultural, and high density city. The ... more Cairo, the Egyptian capital, has grown into a complex, multicultural, and high density city. The dynamics of which is reflected through her everyday realities in public urban spaces, which show a growing tension between the different involved parties, formal/ informal, private/ public, administration/ people, and place/ people. Simultaneously, Jacques Derrida, among few other researchers, questioned the misrepresentation of Cairo-space through the monolithic image of the historic Islamic city, which helped to isolate her from reality and develop the complex and dynamic patterns of relations and tension. Accordingly, we approach the paradox of the misrepresentation of the city and question the role of architects and urban designers towards the city space, as they lack the tools to approach these multiplicities and dynamics.
The main aim of the research is to develop reflexive reading strategies of place, with special reference to Cairo-space, which operates between multiple projections of place through both abstract theory and contextual realities. Accordingly, we draw on a multi-disciplinary approach that considers both theoretical and empirical data. We approach different theories of place developed through post-structuralism with particular emphasis on deconstruction -khōra-;social studies of place particularly environmental psychology, that intrinsically operate within an architectural background. Accordingly, we consider a case-study of public space in Cairo to reflect on the reading strategies rather than develop a reading of Cairo-space.
Consequently, we are adopting a reflexive methodology to approach the dynamics of our multidisciplinary approach, and which operates on four levels of interpretation; data construction through theories of place and the case study in Cairo; primary interpretative framework of place which was developed through a preliminary reading of theories of place; critical interpretation which considers deconstruction reading strategies; and finally, self reflection that re-approaches the reading strategies critically through 'khōra'.
FORUM Ejournal 2008-09 Editorial Committee, Jan 1, 2009
Books by Mona Abdelwahab
Providing a critique of the concepts attached to the representation of urban space, this ground-b... more Providing a critique of the concepts attached to the representation of urban space, this ground-breaking book formulates a new theory of space, which understands the dynamic interrelations between physical and social spaces while tracing the wider urban context. It offers a new tool to approach the reading of these interrelations through reflexive reading strategies that identify singular reading fragments of the different spaces through multiple reader-time-space relations. The strategies proposed in the volume seek to develop an integrative reading of urban space through recognition of the singular (influenced by discourse, institution, etc.); and temporal (influenced by reading perspective in space and time), thereby providing a relational perspective that goes beyond the paradox of place in between social and physical space, identifying each in terms of relationships oscillating between the conceptual, the physical and social content, and the context. In conclusion, the book suggests that space/place can be read through sequential fragments of people, place, context, mind, and author/reader. Operating at different scales between conceptual space and reality, the sequential reading helps the recognition of multiplicity and the dynamics of place as a transformational process without hierarchy or classification.
Publisher: Routledge: Taylor and FrancisISBN: 9781409452287 March 2018
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Papers by Mona Abdelwahab
These virtual spaces presented to the teams to visualize the environmental and social impacts of the designed space provide an experiential dynamic space, a cyberspace that helps the designer to materialize, experiment and live through their ideas. Visualization tools still lag behind when it comes to providing real time, interactive and reliable means of communication of environmental conditions in the urban space. This chapter shows how sensory urban environments can be designed and tested before they are built by incorporating layers of environmental urban performance in the early stages of the decision-making process. The ‘monad’ theory can explain the interaction with the virtual in the design boardroom with its oscillations between perceptions and realism. The monad is in an intermediate region introduced by Leibniz to inextricably connect the modern abyss between the abstract and the real, the virtual and the physical. This intermediate region ‘comprises a temporal instance of reality constructed by the monad’, a relation between the physical and the virtual. At the same time there is an in nite number of monads, each of them has its own ‘point of view’ of the physical/virtual (Scruton 2001).
It is acknowledged here that the scienti c nature of urban performance simulation may lead to an ‘omniscient effect’ where recipients of the urban performance environmental simulation data may be overwhelmed by the scienti c nature of the presented visualizations. If the right questions are not asked in the design team, and the limitations of urban performance predictions are not well understood, then major discrepancies between the virtual and real urban space performance predictions will occur in reality.
@ 2017 Routledge, Taylor and Francis
The main aim of the research is to develop reflexive reading strategies of place, with special reference to Cairo-space, which operates between multiple projections of place through both abstract theory and contextual realities. Accordingly, we draw on a multi-disciplinary approach that considers both theoretical and empirical data. We approach different theories of place developed through post-structuralism with particular emphasis on deconstruction -khōra-;social studies of place particularly environmental psychology, that intrinsically operate within an architectural background. Accordingly, we consider a case-study of public space in Cairo to reflect on the reading strategies rather than develop a reading of Cairo-space.
Consequently, we are adopting a reflexive methodology to approach the dynamics of our multidisciplinary approach, and which operates on four levels of interpretation; data construction through theories of place and the case study in Cairo; primary interpretative framework of place which was developed through a preliminary reading of theories of place; critical interpretation which considers deconstruction reading strategies; and finally, self reflection that re-approaches the reading strategies critically through 'khōra'.
Books by Mona Abdelwahab
Publisher: Routledge: Taylor and FrancisISBN: 9781409452287 March 2018
These virtual spaces presented to the teams to visualize the environmental and social impacts of the designed space provide an experiential dynamic space, a cyberspace that helps the designer to materialize, experiment and live through their ideas. Visualization tools still lag behind when it comes to providing real time, interactive and reliable means of communication of environmental conditions in the urban space. This chapter shows how sensory urban environments can be designed and tested before they are built by incorporating layers of environmental urban performance in the early stages of the decision-making process. The ‘monad’ theory can explain the interaction with the virtual in the design boardroom with its oscillations between perceptions and realism. The monad is in an intermediate region introduced by Leibniz to inextricably connect the modern abyss between the abstract and the real, the virtual and the physical. This intermediate region ‘comprises a temporal instance of reality constructed by the monad’, a relation between the physical and the virtual. At the same time there is an in nite number of monads, each of them has its own ‘point of view’ of the physical/virtual (Scruton 2001).
It is acknowledged here that the scienti c nature of urban performance simulation may lead to an ‘omniscient effect’ where recipients of the urban performance environmental simulation data may be overwhelmed by the scienti c nature of the presented visualizations. If the right questions are not asked in the design team, and the limitations of urban performance predictions are not well understood, then major discrepancies between the virtual and real urban space performance predictions will occur in reality.
@ 2017 Routledge, Taylor and Francis
The main aim of the research is to develop reflexive reading strategies of place, with special reference to Cairo-space, which operates between multiple projections of place through both abstract theory and contextual realities. Accordingly, we draw on a multi-disciplinary approach that considers both theoretical and empirical data. We approach different theories of place developed through post-structuralism with particular emphasis on deconstruction -khōra-;social studies of place particularly environmental psychology, that intrinsically operate within an architectural background. Accordingly, we consider a case-study of public space in Cairo to reflect on the reading strategies rather than develop a reading of Cairo-space.
Consequently, we are adopting a reflexive methodology to approach the dynamics of our multidisciplinary approach, and which operates on four levels of interpretation; data construction through theories of place and the case study in Cairo; primary interpretative framework of place which was developed through a preliminary reading of theories of place; critical interpretation which considers deconstruction reading strategies; and finally, self reflection that re-approaches the reading strategies critically through 'khōra'.
Publisher: Routledge: Taylor and FrancisISBN: 9781409452287 March 2018