Housing Cairo - The Informal Response

Home to 20 million people and still growing ; Greater Cairo mirrors the global phenomenon of unplanned urban growth. Approximately 60 percent of the population of Africa’s biggest city lives in so-called informal housing ; typically five-to-ten-story concrete-and-brick-infill structures built without permits in the desert or on former agricultural land. Housing Cairo: The Informal Response illuminates the architecture of informality and its mechanisms of production through a series of theoretical essays and architectural design proposals. Central to the project is a re-examination of the concept of “informality” itself and its often negative connotations. As the book argues ; Cairo’s informal response to housing needs is not a marginal phenomenon ; but rather an intelligent ; optimized answer to planning incapacities – an answer that architects and planners should themselves be participating in.