AN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE INFORMAL

//Masterplan for the City of the Dead

*Infrastructures are flexible and anticipatory. They work with time and they are open to transformation. By establishing what must be fixed and what is subject to change, they can be precise and intermediate at the same time. They do not progress toward predetermined state, but are always evolving within a loose envelope of constraints. Infrastructures manage and organize complex systems of flow, movement and exchange. Infrastructures prepare the ground for future building and create the conditions for future events.

The project investigates the role of infrastructure in the city as the tool able to bring a first state of order to informal settlements. Infrastructures give direction to future work in the city, not by establishing rules or codes, but by fixing points of service, access and structure.

This approach is applied to the City of the Dead, the Muslim necropolis in Cairo. The cemetery is located on the west side of the city and has an area of 7sqkm.

The city of Cairo, as other megalopolis in developing countries, is undergoing a period of transformation: three new metro lines are planned for the year 2030 and two of them will run close to the cemetery.

Vision 2050, promoted by the Egyptian Government, plans to entirely demolish the area of the cemetery, in order to provide space for high-rise building developments.

The project aims at proposing an alternative strategy for this area based upon a gradual restructuring of single parts of the cemetery. The strategy implies that the infrastructure is the fixed element appointed to organize several specific interventions.

All the existing elements within the cemetery are graphically synthesized to points and an area of influence is associated to every single one of them. Hence, a map has been generated: the area is described as a field in which its global behaviour is determined by the internal relationship of parts. The resulting image of the city is a virtual landscape related to abstract indicators like the activity and attraction between the single points.

Based on these maps, a phase-oriented strategy is proposed. Each action produces a deformation on the map, allowing to observe the consequences of the intervention within the city.

The first phase of the project provides to intervene at a local level, starting from the existing systems and using the potential embedded in the informal areas. Close to the main mosques and the craftsman activities, projects with a strong cultural characterization are proposed. 

The second phase utilizes the introduction of the subway as the structure for the intervention. New functions and more dense areas are located close to the new subway stops.

Finally the new subway stops and the connection that they allow with the buildings are designed. The architecture is reduced to its vertical distribution. The infrastructural junctions have a decreasing grade of definition from the point of insertion of the infrastructure out. Indeterminate areas are generated. They allow the transition from the points that are fixed and designed to the informal areas.