view from street and buildings facade that adapted to urban fabric. images © Foster+Partners.

Foster+Partners had won the competition to design the masterplan for the Maspero Triangle District in downtown Cairo -launched by the Egyptian Ministry of State for Urban Renewal and Informal Settlements (MURIS). However, the new masterplan proposal come under criticism about the locality, materiality and the peservation of the area’s unique 19th-century architecture. It is discussed that Foster+Partners' new masterplan will be ''valid for businessmen and 90% will be for the rich and not for the real people. They’ll take our homes by force and kick us out to the desert” claims one of the residents. 

One of the residents looks down at the glossy graphics, and then up again, before gesturing around at his neighbours. “Where are we in this picture?” he asks. Norman Foster’s practice has chosen to partner with a government widely condemned by international human rights groups for its brutal crackdowns on dissent and widespread use of torture; in return, the company seems to believe it can carve out a place for itself in the vanguard of a progressive new era of urban design – one that could reshape the Arab world’s most populous nation for the better. Is it right?....Continue Reading

> via The Guardian