The architecture of the city of Cairo, between tradition and modernity, in the Azbakeya Park

The origins of Azbakeya (أزﺑﻜﯿﺔ)date back to the Mamluk Era, where the receding edge of the Nile opened opportunities for urban expansion of Cairo, passing through the Ottomans until it assumed the connotations of a place of recreation in the fifteenth century with the excavation of the lake. In 1798, Azbakeya was still a large body of water, and only in the early 1900s, following its burial, was it redesigned as an octagonal French garden. The story of the Azabkeya Park reaches up to the present day, becoming a project site for the students of the architectural design studio engaged in the conception of a Book Market Hall. The research aims to analyse the works carried out at the German University in Cairo (GUC) both from a methodological point of view on how to approach and conduct a design process and a critical reflection on the project. A review on the teaching of a way of confronting the art of building in a context, Cairo, is full of significant elements, but at the same time, critical of the reading of the city, of the references and how to make them effective in designing the new artefact. The new Book Market Hall arises from the need to redefine the identity of a place distorted by the construction of the underground line below in an attempt to give new life to the original park. However, Azbakeya still represents an element of natural transition between the urban fabric of the Islamic city to the east side and the Haussmannian plan of Downtown to the west side. Finally, what design strategy can lead the interrupted discourse towards a new city architecture? The answer is in its knowledge or the study of reality along the still visible layers of history.