Manar Moursi Website
"Reframing Back/What happens to the knowledge produced? On Egypt at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale"
Mada, Cairo, Egypt & Domus, Milan, Italy, 2016
This essay asks a blunt question: once Egypt’s pavilion research leaves the Giardini, who actually uses it? Moving from the Biennale’s galleries back to Cairo’s informal streets and gated deserts, the piece diagnoses Egypt’s twin urban trajectories—DIY sprawl for the many, escapist suburbia for the few—and profiles the mapping labs and design collectives trying to hack those realities. Rather than measuring finished buildings, it interrogates “knowledge production” itself: funding models, academic–community alliances, and whether biennial buzz can morph into concrete gains in housing, labor, and heritage policy.
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Criticism & Academic Writing