Tarek Wagih
Tarek Wagih Hamdy
Born 1967, Cairo, Egypt
For over three decades, Tarek Wagih has been a rising voice calling for innovation in architecture, interior and furniture design in Egypt. Among the key projects in his design portfolio are Dr. Ahmed Okasha's Psychiatric Health Resort (the leading psychiatry clinic in Egypt) and the Renaissance multiplex cinemas. In addition, Tarek has created several lines of furniture and home accessories where he creatively synthesizes his interest in minimalism with the poetics of classical Islamic architecture and calligraphy.
Tarek's interest in Islamic architecture was kindled by his discovery of Fatimid and Mamluke architecture through in the late 80's. The work of the late Hassan Fathi, renowned for his unique ethnic style of architecture further influenced him, furnishing him with a new perspective on the authentic proportions and detail of Arabic architecture and more importantly an insight into the need to work with, rather than against nature. He was also greatly influenced by the work of Luis Barragan and Mies van der Rohe which taught him that the true raw material of architecture is place rather than mass.
Along with these professional influences, Tarek has sustained a lifetime passion for Arabic poetry and heritage, inspiring him to combine the rudiments of Islamic and Arabic aesthetics with his re-exploration of the meaning of 'place' in modern Egypt. Tarek has been an equally veracious reader of philosophy especially phenomenology and existentialism. Highly impressed by Husserl, Heidegger and other phenomenologists, Tarek avidly investigated the writings and work of leading Architects influenced by these philosophy gurus from Christian Norberg Schulz through Claudio Silvestrine.
Harmoniously merging all these lines of thought and artistic reflections, Tarek developed his own insight into the meaning of architectural renewal in contemporary Arab and Muslim context. To him renewal, consists neither in indulging a progressive march towards technology and simple mimicking of modern lines, nor in a neo-classical or postmodern recasting of old designs. Tarek fervently believes that renewal is a disclosure of how we normally assimilate the past. The past is never gone to be imitated and the future is not simply a copying of what we label progressive. Instead, renewal is the fundamental integration of the present in the past that we already grow into through tradition, social norms and ethical systems. Artistic renewal is just bringing to light what we always already do in day-to-day life. The poetics of his design aims to re-discover how a reflective Arabic Muslim spirit spatially orients itself in and what it intellectually explores about a modern setting into which it was born and to whose demands it responds.
Phone: 002 011 10800062
Address: Cairo, Egypt
Heliopolis
Born 1967, Cairo, Egypt
For over three decades, Tarek Wagih has been a rising voice calling for innovation in architecture, interior and furniture design in Egypt. Among the key projects in his design portfolio are Dr. Ahmed Okasha's Psychiatric Health Resort (the leading psychiatry clinic in Egypt) and the Renaissance multiplex cinemas. In addition, Tarek has created several lines of furniture and home accessories where he creatively synthesizes his interest in minimalism with the poetics of classical Islamic architecture and calligraphy.
Tarek's interest in Islamic architecture was kindled by his discovery of Fatimid and Mamluke architecture through in the late 80's. The work of the late Hassan Fathi, renowned for his unique ethnic style of architecture further influenced him, furnishing him with a new perspective on the authentic proportions and detail of Arabic architecture and more importantly an insight into the need to work with, rather than against nature. He was also greatly influenced by the work of Luis Barragan and Mies van der Rohe which taught him that the true raw material of architecture is place rather than mass.
Along with these professional influences, Tarek has sustained a lifetime passion for Arabic poetry and heritage, inspiring him to combine the rudiments of Islamic and Arabic aesthetics with his re-exploration of the meaning of 'place' in modern Egypt. Tarek has been an equally veracious reader of philosophy especially phenomenology and existentialism. Highly impressed by Husserl, Heidegger and other phenomenologists, Tarek avidly investigated the writings and work of leading Architects influenced by these philosophy gurus from Christian Norberg Schulz through Claudio Silvestrine.
Harmoniously merging all these lines of thought and artistic reflections, Tarek developed his own insight into the meaning of architectural renewal in contemporary Arab and Muslim context. To him renewal, consists neither in indulging a progressive march towards technology and simple mimicking of modern lines, nor in a neo-classical or postmodern recasting of old designs. Tarek fervently believes that renewal is a disclosure of how we normally assimilate the past. The past is never gone to be imitated and the future is not simply a copying of what we label progressive. Instead, renewal is the fundamental integration of the present in the past that we already grow into through tradition, social norms and ethical systems. Artistic renewal is just bringing to light what we always already do in day-to-day life. The poetics of his design aims to re-discover how a reflective Arabic Muslim spirit spatially orients itself in and what it intellectually explores about a modern setting into which it was born and to whose demands it responds.
Phone: 002 011 10800062
Address: Cairo, Egypt
Heliopolis
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