Mohsen Aboulnaga

This article presents an assessment of sustainability conducted post the opening of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC), which underwent vast development that had significant impacts, not only on the global level but also on the international attention towards Egypt’s great civilization. The study investigates the impact of the NMEC’s environmental, social, and economic sustainability and cultural value. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were adopted. The qualitative includes a preliminary study followed by site visits for collecting data and mapping the four sustainability pillars: environmental, social, economic, and cultural. The quantitative approach has been conducted by exploiting 33 indicators to measure five sustainability dimensions in addition to the UNESCO 15 Thematic Indicators for Culture in the 2030 Agenda; the impact of NMEC on social media using the data scraping technique exploiting GitHub. Energy audit results illustrate that the total annual energy consumption is 491,376.00 kWh (79% in the ground fl. & 21% in the Mummies fl.), as well as 19.98 kWh/m2 (Gr. fl.) and 144 kWh/m2 (Mummies fl.); the first matches RIBA’s benchmark for museums, well below the ranking ‘Good’ (50 kWh/m2). Social sustainability impacts indicate that the word count’s effect on social media is 27%, 31%, and 42% on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, respectively, while the number of followers is 92%, 7%, and 1%. On Google, it is 1275 and ranks 4.7, whereas the number of posts is 231, 350, and 258. Economic sustainability assessment has been addressed by calculating the revenues throughout one year since the grand opening, and the total revenues amount to USD 2,794,047. The cultural sustainability assessment showed a positive response to the evaluation recorded for 9 out of 15 indicators. The sustainability assessment of the NMEC plays a key role in assuring livable and regenerative cities.

Abstract

Vernacular architecture is the traditional architecture built by indigenous (local) people in a country. It can be considered sustainable as it exhibits the consideration of environmental, social, cultural and economic factors. Vernacular architecture has been built in many countries around the world. It reflects the culture and tradition of indigenous people using simple forms and local materials supported by simple construction skills. Africa has many examples of vernacular architecture using natural resources within reach locally. Also, Latin America, Asia and Europe show various and similar examples. By-and-large, vernacular architecture illustrates many aspects of sustainability and addresses sustainable development requirements in terms of needs and limitations. Nonetheless, vernacular buildings demonstrate compliance with and adherence to basic green principles. This chapter focuses on vernacular architecture in general and presents leading global and regional traditional buildings, including examples in Africa (58 countries) and Middle East (13 countries) to learn about and detect synergies and to assist in better understanding of the vernacular architecture worldwide and the selected cases in Egypt. In this review, building types, materials, elements of structure and forms were illustrated and assessed. Factors influencing vernacular architecture in many countries are presented and discussed. Comparison between vernacular architecture examples in Africa was conducted in terms of building types and climatic region, specifically under parameters such as building shape (form), colour and materials as well as structural and sustainability features. In addition, examples of vernacular architecture in Egypt were reviewed and illustrated, mainly: Aswan, Luxor and Western Desert. A comparison between examples of vernacular architecture in Siwa Oasis in Egypt was conducted in terms of use, building materials, structure and project description as well as social sustainability, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability. Finally, lessons learned from global, regional and Egyptian vernacular architecture as well as sustainability guidelines for future development are outlined.

Keywords: Vernacular architecture Sustainability principles Sustainable materials Guidelines Africa Egypt