Abstract
The Architecture of Home in Cairo: Socio-Spatial Practice of the Hawari’s Everyday Life is an ambitious undertaking by Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem. In 14 chapters, divided into three parts, the book examines domestic architecture in Cairo by focusing on the hawari, ‘short, broken, zigzag streets with innumerable dead ends’ (p. 2) that compose the basic urban structure of the city since the city’s founding until the early 20th century. The central question of the books is ‘By what processes/strategies, the architecture of home, over the past two centuries, has developed in the hawari of Old Cairo an organization of space sufficiently flexible to respond to the changing needs of everyday life?’ (p. 9). The influence of Henri Lefebvre is apparent in the conceptualization of the book, which seeks to map Historic Cairo’s social spaces and practices of everyday life that define them.
The author chooses the term ‘home’ to describe the domestic spaces he studies. The definition of home is provided as follows: ‘Whereas houses are built to accommodate activities of private life, homes are constructed out of continuities of social-cultural, rituals and patterns of living’ (p. 19). In order to answer the book’s principal question, the author begins with an overview of the very concept of ‘home’ in human history. When it comes to dwellings in Cairo, the author argues that Old Cairo ‘is a unique context’ with regards to the development of domestic architecture. However, it is unclear how this unique context of Cairo relates to other Arab cities such as the historic centers of Jerusalem, Damascus or Aleppo. Cairo’s ‘unique context’ is defined in the book in the context of modern (defined as Western-influenced) areas of Cairo, presented as imported alien forms of habitus (to borrow Hassan Fathy’s views on vernacularism).
The Architecture of Home in Cairo considers the hawari not as figments of a medieval past, but rather as spaces of everyday life in contemporary Cairo. The author aims to ‘learn the dynamics of architecture of home, from bottom-up, through understanding ideals, values systems, social structures and socio-cultural developments that resulted in changing forms of living over time’ (p. 313). Abdelmonem reconsiders what he calls ‘the architecture of home’ in Old Cairo through five main strands: the ways in which medieval architecture in Cairo has been understood, sociological understanding of hawari and domestic architecture, contemporary adaptations of older physical structures and organizational patterns, the role of memory and historical continuity, and finally, the lessons that this complex urban habitus can offer the professions of architecture and planning today. The book offers new research and information regarding the physical and social practices of dwellings in today’s Historic Cairo, but it must be said it seems not to have benefited from any editorial guidance or proofreading. Even then, The Architecture of Home in Cairo should be of interest to students of Cairo in particular as well as students of urban geography, urban design, and architecture more broadly.