PurposeThis paper aims to examine the transformation of the concept of cultural tourism within the sociopolitical empowerments, changes of visual realms and normative contexts, which is embedded within museums as institutions.Design/methodology/approachThese discussions will be conceptualized through investigating the shifts in the metamorphosis of the architectural vocabulary of Egypt's museums between nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This analysis will be highlighted through connecting both the notion of the “tourist reflexivity” of John Urry and Jonas Larsen in The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (2011) and the notion of the “interstitial spaces” and “new internationalism” of Homi Bhabha in The Location of Culture (1994). The analysis expands to interrogate these two notions as prelude for reflecting on representations of colonial and postcolonial museums in Egypt, starting from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, Cairo (c. 1863) to the most recent, the Egyptian Grand Museum, Cairo (c. 2002).FindingsThe analysis revealed that while colonial museums endeavored to stage external cultural authority and postcolonial ones staged traditions' liminality through “New internationalism”, they created spatiotemporal interstices. This finding, while is a timely example with the rising global cultural encounters that emerged during this transformative age, it challenges the collective imaginations of architects to liberate from traditional nationalism.Originality/valueThe paper offers novel theoretical and architectural analysis of Egypt's museums through the exigency of nationalism and “new internationalism”. The encounter between both notions is a timely example given the recent involvements by the “Modern State” and the recent pandemic upheaval that revealed the inevitability of globalism and the discursivity of such notions.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical account on the contemporary architecture of Cairo with emphasis on the past three decades, from the early 1990s to the present. The paper critically analyses narratives of the plurality of “isms”, within architectural vocabulary and discourse, that resulted from the contextual particularities that shaped it. Design/methodology/approach Three lines of inquiry are envisioned as overarching aspects of architecture: the chronological, the interventional and the representational. These discussions are underpinned by the discourse of decolonialisation and cosmopolitanism, posited sequentially by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), and Ulrich Beck in The Cosmopolitan Vision (2004). The analysis expands to interrogate these two notions as prelude for reflecting on representations of selected projects: The Smart Village (2001); the Great Egyptian Museum (2002), Al-Azhar Park (2005), American University in Cairo New Campus (2008/2009), and the New Administrative Capital (2018). Findings The investigation on the interventional and the representational levels via aspects of discursivity and contradictions highlights that decolonisation and cosmopolitanism are two inseparable facets in the architectural practice in Egypt’s 21st century. These indivisible notions are based on idiosyncratic core to human experience, which emerged from concurrent overturning historical and secular everyday life striving to suppress ideological supremacy. Research limitations/implications Further detailed examples can be developed to offer discerning elucidations relevant to both notions of cosmopolitanism and decolonialisation. Originality/value The paper offers novel theoretical analysis of Cairo’s most recent architecture. The reflection on the notions of decolonialisation and cosmopolitanism is a timely example of the complex cultural encounters that have shaped the Egyptian architecture, given the recent interventions by the “Modern State” that legitimised such notions.
This article explores the role of human mobility in the reconfiguration of Egypt’s modern identity in the nineteenth century. It connects James Clifford’s Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (1997) with Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994) to interpret the construction of identities during the reign of Khedive Ismail (1863–79). The argument focuses on Ismail’s attempts to modernize the country passed through discursive ‘routes’ that were manifested in socio-political systems and architectural practices. While the Suez Canal represents the new routes advocated by the Khedive, its inauguration in 1869 manifests the notion of ambivalence between imperialism and anti-imperialism. This ambivalence materialized in the hybrid designs of both the Gezira Palace (1863–68) and the ‘Abdin Palace (1863–74), and in the emulation of the Haussmann Plan – which resulted in, this article argues, a ‘contact zone’ or ‘interstitial’ spaces in which political coalitions with global powers were prefigured. This material history cannot be dismissed as exotic follies, accidental hybrids or romantic Occidentalism.
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