Egypt

Egypt: Middle East in Focus, ed. Mona Russell, 2013

This is the fourth of five parts; see the section labeled Art and Architecture for Parts 1-3. (Part 5 is still in process.)

This is the third part of a five-part series intended primarily for non-professionals in Egyptology; i.e., an introductory-level presentation, including a brief bibliography of excellent sources for further study.

This is the second part of a five-part series intended primarily for non-professionals in Egyptology; i.e., an introductory-level presentation, including a brief bibliography of excellent sources for further study.

A five-part series drawn from earlier work and course notes for a mini-course on this topic, developed for a non-professional audience of people new to Egyptology.

The concluding part of this series presents analyses and commentaries on some examples of Egyptian art and architecture.

Fung Hybrid Symposium, Princeton | The Profession’s Extensions: Architecture Beyond Architects in the Modern Middle East, 2022

In 1911, Ernest Richmond, British architect and colonial officer, wrote an article about native and vernacular Building Methods in Egypt. Though it addressed an eminent audience at the RIBA, the article didn't draw much attention later and remains little known. Nevertheless, it offers, in the clarity of a treatise, a brief but dense documentation of vernacular building materials and practices that wereprevalent in Egypt at a crucial point in time, much before such a discourse came to be popularized in the2nd half of the twentieth century. Drawing on archival sources and supporting literature, I will examineand analyse the article through a two-fold perspective; the one is material, or how the use of reinforcedconcrete came to proliferate through the co-incidence of the industrialist, the army office and theengineer; while the other is intangible, tracing the shift in the conception of mud as vernacular and itsroots in a colonial dichotomy. It attempts to contribute to the history of vernacular architecture at theintersection of rural urbanization and colonialism in Egypt and the Modern Middle East.