Tahrir as break: Between a City and a Square—Spaces of power | Presentation of Columbia University GSAPP students of design studio findings under the supervision of Shahira Fahmy.

An open invitation to attend a presentation by grad students of Columbia University of the interim findings of the studio on Istanbul and Cairo run by Egytian architect Shahira Fahmy.

The studio challenges students to define, take account and intervene on ‘sites of contestation’ in Istanbul and Cairo. For the first half of the semester the students, researched sites and developed an intervention remotely, prior to visiting the first city–Istanbul. For the second half, students will translate strategies from the first city and develop an intervention for the second city–Cairo–after their visit. Although each student has identified a Macro network of Contestation and developed (3) micro interventions for Istanbul, the second half of the semester will focus on (2) projects–one for Istanbul and one for Cairo. The main objective of the studio is to invent spatial strategies that challenge and re-imagine the power struggles that are currently being played out in both cities. By focusing on two opposing scales (micro and macro) the students will identify echoes between these two cities and generate strategies that will be tested at varying scales.

In English