Restoring porosity in Greater Cairo through architectures without architects

Case study of the “Koka” pigeon tower in Garbage City

Abstract

The etymology of the word radical, (from late Latin radicalis, der. of radix -icis ‘root’) suggests a connection to spontaneous, revolutionary and potentially irrational actions. Cairo, Egypt, a place of friction and opposition, with its compounds and at the same time architecture without planners, shows how impulses from below and without hierarchies, are challenging privileged urban settlements, which are New Cairo and the New Capital, designed as links between one gate and the other, appealing to the necessity of security. Old Cairo, meanwhile, resists abandonment with its spontaneous architectures: talking about the case study of the dovecotes, slender and playful towers, we realize how they can represent an attempt to learn both from the use of the structure itself, possibilist and improvised, and from their effective role in inviting for a porous urbe, while new armored cities are being built; these ephemeral non-architectures, like a rhizome are placed on the roofs of various buildings in the poorest neighborhoods (Fig.1), generating a network based on common ideals and unwritten social agreements, but above all, they restore play in adult life as a fundamental element of everyday life. Focusing on their non-architecture, they are self-built, dedicated to a non-human persona (pigeons) and have a purely playful function, while occupying the city's skyline, forcefully entering the imagination of passengers. How many designed architectures can say the same? How many can introduce inputs into people's life, being based on a non-function and at the same time strongly define the urban scenario?