Egyptian pavilion in Venice; four entries
Prof. Nabeel Elhady
Published in Cairo Digest V1–FUNDAMENTALS-2025
In a seminar organized by the supreme council for culture- few years back- I questioned the necessity of the Egyptian participation in the Venice Biennale. The immediate answer then was that Egypt as a founder of this international bi annual event with her own building has to fill this empty space when the time comes.
Later I said to myself if we as Egyptians going to participate anyway then how this participation becomes a meaningful one?
To explore a potential answer, I participated in the 2016 biennale competition to select the Egyptian entry. The curator of this biennale chose a title for the event as “Report from the Front”. His idea was that the essence of architectural struggle is to improve people living conditions in a way that emphasize the architect’s commitment to the public interest against the immediate interpretation of the client interest. Our proposed response to that was to transform the space of the pavilion into a testing ground for architectural and urban recent projects that shares this intention. We proposed to use a scaled model for these projects within a giant map of Cairo that covers the floor and the walls of the pavilion in a way that makes them more understandable to the biennale visitors and hopefully when it ends bring it Egypt for further exhibiting and public discussions. In some sense the giant 3D map can be thought of as space for testing other emerging ideas as well and enabling people from any background to understand and discuss what is being offered through these projects.
In 2018, the curators chose “Freespace” as a topic for the biennale. Their intention was to encourage finding new way to see the world that allow for inventing architectural solutions that offer dignity and quality for every citizen on this fragile planet. For them the absence of good quality architecture makes the world poorer and lower the communal wellbeing. The “Freespace” for them is a manifestation of the extended architectural responsibly toward the gifts of nature through the human imagination.
Our response was to propose the “Freespace explorer”, a place that is inspired by ancient Egyptian temples rebuild with a material connected to the rise of Egyptian civilization and is plant based one which is the common reed. The idea was to dismantle and rebuild this place in after the biennale in many places around Egypt in order to allow for a discovery and discussion of how we are related to nature in a way to help us understand the challenges and prepare to fight against.
In 2020 the first time Arab curator posed a question “How we will live together”. Our response this time was based on our years long studies that sees nature as the basis for any architectural attempt to connect people together and lead them to a sustainable and decent future. We proposed building models for the three areas we study; Burj Rasheed, Qusier and Mit Rahina. In all three studies we selected one street that represent the public space for the area where we focus on water as the main issue. Our goal was to discuss our future anticipation of an alternative future where people connect in different geographies of Egypt. At the heart of this architecture can emerge as an intelligent response to environmental, social and economical challenges. This also supports Egypt’s response to climate change.
In 2023, and in response to the title “ Lab of the future”, we proposed that the Egyptian pavilion will host an interactive theatre where real people deal with the contemporary challenges. The play we proposed has number of characters where every one of them has a distinguished role. The play will be conducted in a Souradek which is a local traditional structure where burj Rasheed people are frequently using for celebrations of different personal and social events. There will also other small Souradeks in parallel in Burj Rasheed.
The play consists of six acts, the first act is the opening where visitors are received into a rough cloth surroundings. The second act is where the visitor passes by the wall where maps documenting the environmental deterioration along the past two centuries around the Rasheed estuary. It extends this time line into the future and present the science-based scenarios expected later this century. The third act contains the main Souradek where a huge map of the populated area of Burj Rasheed is presented next to the agricultural area and part of the Nile river and the Mediterranean Sea. This map is presenting a local situation where human beings are surrounded by nature which is in some sense the global situation as well. Within the souradek the fourth takes place in certain times of week where visitors will be able to talk to residents of Burj Rasheed online to hear from them first hand on the local challenges. Three meetings are proposed; one that centered around water, another around food and a third around history. In the final act visitors will be invited to imagine themselves in year 2050 and write to himself now a letter. A letter that will be pinned in the wall in his way out of the pavilion.
During those four entries, I attempted with my teams that were full of young people not only form Egypt but from other countries as well to engage seriously with the Biennale topic. Only in one occasion which is the 2018 entry we were selected among the finalists. Apart from that I think that my first critique of the Egyptian pavilion entries is really in agreement with what the great architect Jack Hertzog description of the Expo which is also a nation-based pavilions international exhibition that it is becoming a place to show off not really a place to discuss the serious challenges facing humanity.