Nazlet El-Semman, Cairo Site Analysis

This was a collaborative project that contains an in-depth analysis on the slums that are in Nazlet El-Semman in Cairo between 4 Masters of Architecture year 2 students from UWE Bristol, these include Kirstie Jackson, Alexandra Bird, Thalia Vaughan and Samantha Lee. Alongside the research of the slums as group we identified various biological systems that could help us understand how the slums thrived. The slums were built at a close proximity to the world famous Great Pyramids of Giza, the government see these slums as an ‘eye sore’, and have been trying to get rid of them entirely they have succeeded when the slums were built past the border between the slums and the ancient land. However, they were unable to get rid of the rest as in reality the government and the people of Egypt rely on slum dwellers and vice versa, they need each other to grow.  We discovered that the people in the slums relied heavily on tourism as an income and if they were not working directly in the tourism sector, a vast majority of them would be working as rubbish collectors and selling these recycled materials – we linked this to how bees pollinate plants.

A site analysis on the slums in Cairo.