Natalie Harper Unit 18 _ Living amongst the dead
THE HYBRIDISED HOME
Homemaking in Cairo’s Necropolis.
framing statement
Exploring the ‘city of the dead’ a cemetery dating back to the 17th century, which has become “One of the biggest necropolises is located inside Cairo. It is unclear how many people are living in the tombs of their families. Underneath the earth, several rooms are found. Migration, expensive housing, and natural disasters drove entire families to move into these Mausoleums and generations to be born in these conditions. Unusual in their forms, these structures have more of a resemblance to small houses than tombs .This project looks into the understanding of homemaking in a queer site, the city of the Dead, Eastern Cemetery of Cairo.
By producing a series of prototypes that unmask, reveal and subvert the stigma of tomb-dwelling.
As the space dynamics of these mausoleums become hybridize, home-making takes course.
“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”(Baldwin 1956).
The project looks into the series of conditions that effect the people, i.e. reasons behind this phenomenon, the grave difficulties they experience and ghosts of uncertainty. Research extends into the understanding of how these people adapt to the conditions whilst also making a livelihood.
Some of the research methodology will include model-making, drawing along with practices of unmasking, transfer and resemblance of the conventional home. Whilst looking at ethnographic drawings and digital recreations as a way of creating an archive of prototypes that breathes life into the to the subsistence of the downtrodden of Cairo.
The Eastern Cemetery (Also Known as the Northern cemetery), and Southern Cemetery of Cairo Necropolis.
The City of the Dead, or Cairo Necropolis, also referred to as the Qarafa (Arabic: القرافة, romanized: al-Qarafa) is a series of vast Islamic-era necropolises and cemeteries on the edges of Historic Cairo, in Egypt.
history
city of the dead
Abstract
Cairo's spontaneous poor communities signify the growing socio-economic disparity since 1970's open door economic liberalization policy and 1990's IMF's structural adjustment program. These poverty belts attract rural migrants and urban poor from Cairo's residential core areas as a result of high land prices, shortage of affordable housing and decay of existing housing stock .
Typical example of these poverty belts are cemetery areas (Cities of the Dead ) within Cairo's eastern fringes. The aim of the project is to examine contested spaces within the Cities of the Dead, initially through a reconsideration of the number of occupants and of the relative balance of tomb dwellings and more conventional shantytown buildings. The tombs and mausoleums of the city's ancient and extensive cemeteries have been occupied by squatters, some of whom live in the mausoleums themselves, others in self-built constructions between and around the tombs.
Aerial photograph over Eastern Cemetery, Cairo Necropolis, Egypt
grave uncertainty
Home to the dead,homeless and downtrodden
city of the dead,1904
