FROM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TO HOUSE OF THE CAIRENES, RECLAIMING THE NEW VACANCIES OF CAIRO

by Rana Soliman

In line with the relocation of the Egyptian capital to the new administrative capital in the eastern desert, new vacancies are to emerge in the heart of the old capital, Cairo. Governmental buildings are among the first to move, creating voids of potentialities in prime locations, which could be utilised to re-imagine a new Cairo stripped from the centralized power and the surplus population. My thesis is to invigorate the role of the citizen in governance, reclaiming spaces of previous representation of power and decision-making to celebrate and embrace the role of the soft power.The governmental block is to be transformed into a celebration of collective empowerment - an alternative typology of a parliament embracing the cultural densities of the Cairene’s livelihoods. The project is using a novel, imagining its characters living and participating in the alternative parliament, promising a new hope and a democratic place.