Project
The project shocks the onlooker and engulfs the benefactor, whether a book vendor, a shopper an audience in a concert or seminar, disengaging them from the institution and establishment of normalized thought into a space for unhindered individuality.
Embodying shock, as the garden is to the surrounding urban sprawl, as a book is to a non-reading society, as individuality is to institution.
Context
Passing over El-Azbakeia gardens is akin -or at least was- to passing over an oasis, this astounding stretch of green situated in an inimitable urban context, linking the old Cairo with its fractal Islamic urban fabric and the new Downtown area with its geometric European patterns.
The gardens have always been linked with knowledge and culture, from its early beginnings as an informal place where second-hand book vendors gathered to sell books to the young cairene intelligentsia, a tradition that is upheld till today, although much more decorous now.
The addition of the theatre complex, that although devoured part of the once picturesque gardens, adds to the integrity of the place as a cultural node of Cairo.
Approach
One can procure that knowledge is a product of the individuality it forms, for art is the utmost expression of individuality, and science is the record of it. After all, knowledge -or the accumulation of it- shapes the individual. To be more precise, it is in the disparity in the reception of knowledge that individualities are fashioned.
Society by definition is an assortment of individuals, the degree of societal success and coherence, is not measured by the likeness of its contained individuals, but their tolerance for disparity.
The articulation of that mutual connection between knowledge and society lies in the importance of the individual’s distinctiveness.

2007

2007

ahmed samir ghanem
marwan abou elsoud
mahmud abd elrauf
nader ramadan
ahmed emam

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