900 KM Nile City
17 Feb - 06 Mar 2013
900 KM NILE CITY
Curated by: Amr Abdel Kawi and Moataz Faissal Farid
Collaborators: Atelier Kempe Thill, baukuh and GRAU with Lola, Aymen Hashem-AHUD, Deerns Italia, Angelo Boris Boriolo, Stefano Graziani, Saverio Pesapane, Bas Princen, Giovanna Silva
17 February - 6 March 2013
The Nile City is a series of settlements located in the Nile Valley, a 900 km long stretch of land between Aswan and Cairo. It is an accident. There was never the will or the wish to create it; it just happened. The Nile City is a new city type that was formed simply by rapid population growth.
The Nile City is an unprecedented city. In imagining the future Nile City, we are operating in an intellectual vacuum. It is not understandable through the application of 19th- and 20th-century urban theory. Maybe this is because, according to strict Darwinian rules, the Nile City should be extinct given that it is not self-sustaining.
A project is necessary to imagine the future of the Nile City. And a project must be provided quickly, because in the Nile Valley there are too many people, too little water and arable land and even less time. At this point a certain naivety (and our proposals are undeniably naïve) is anyhow better than indifference. In the Nile Valley, the alternatives are not architecture or revolution, but action or exhaustion, design or extinction.From February 17 to March 6, Townhouse presents 900 Km Nile City, a long-term research collaboration resulting in photographs, architectural models, publications and a film that propose various design solutions for the city. The 900 Km Nile City has been exhibited in European venues and published in the international architecture press. This is its first exhibition in Cairo.
Curated by: Amr Abdel Kawi and Moataz Faissal Farid
Collaborators: Atelier Kempe Thill, baukuh and GRAU with Lola, Aymen Hashem-AHUD, Deerns Italia, Angelo Boris Boriolo, Stefano Graziani, Saverio Pesapane, Bas Princen, Giovanna Silva
17 February - 6 March 2013
The Nile City is a series of settlements located in the Nile Valley, a 900 km long stretch of land between Aswan and Cairo. It is an accident. There was never the will or the wish to create it; it just happened. The Nile City is a new city type that was formed simply by rapid population growth.
The Nile City is an unprecedented city. In imagining the future Nile City, we are operating in an intellectual vacuum. It is not understandable through the application of 19th- and 20th-century urban theory. Maybe this is because, according to strict Darwinian rules, the Nile City should be extinct given that it is not self-sustaining.
A project is necessary to imagine the future of the Nile City. And a project must be provided quickly, because in the Nile Valley there are too many people, too little water and arable land and even less time. At this point a certain naivety (and our proposals are undeniably naïve) is anyhow better than indifference. In the Nile Valley, the alternatives are not architecture or revolution, but action or exhaustion, design or extinction.From February 17 to March 6, Townhouse presents 900 Km Nile City, a long-term research collaboration resulting in photographs, architectural models, publications and a film that propose various design solutions for the city. The 900 Km Nile City has been exhibited in European venues and published in the international architecture press. This is its first exhibition in Cairo.