Paradoxical Union: the Meeting of the “Less” and the “More” in Nasr City
Omar Khaled
Omar Khaled Mohamed, a visual artist and multidisciplinary architect at CLUSTER, obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Architectural Engineering from the American University in Cairo in 2023. Believing in the intersection of duty towards the city and its inhabitants and the power of individual and collective creativity in spatial praxis, his inquiries are grounded in socio-political and economic mechanisms as well as environmental matters in the built environment.
How can we contextualize the discourse on Modernism and other polemic phrases like “less is more” or “less is a bore” in such an economically, socially and politically contested landscape, and also seemingly unrelated context, that is Cairo? In this tour and talk I propose the paradoxical meeting (union) of modernism and a crude form of post-modernism as each entered the city hurled by a socio-political ideology; a trial of socialism and an ever expanding neoliberal landscape, respectively. This inquiry was grounded in tracing patterns of inhabiting the city, building the city, and navigating the political economy and recognizing the materialization of these patterns, making up Nasr City’s fabric as we know it now.
