Sahar Imam

Building in traditional existing context has always presented a serious challenge, raising critical questions on how new designs should interact with the context. Some theories are claiming that interaction is achieved by relating the new buildings to older buildings’ aesthetics and replicating the old style. Other theories are declaring that a new design should respond to its own period of time since architecture always
represents its time. Old historical contexts are characterized by high level of mixed uses, and residential use is the highest. Therefore the cooperation and agreement of local community seems to be essential in each infill design case, in order to understand local communities’ culture and needs, and thus aesthetics dilemma becomes a problem to be related to community not just keep it exclusive to designers
and theorists. The current paper critically studies the guidelines and design criteria commonly applied to infill design in urban conservation areas by specialized control agencies and centers. It intends to assess the relation between these guidelines and laypersons’ response and preferences especially that many actors are involved in infill issues related to special historical contexts starting from local communities, control agencies, intellectuals to professionals and designers. Most of the guidelines’ lists focus on the formal aesthetics of the environments and its physical qualities, especially visual and spatial qualities. The paper critically reviews the necessity of focusing on the content of the environment form and the way lay persons see it and relate to it, by having a comprehensive design brief specific to the site of infill, the brief has common key physical and formal guidelines to preserve area character and ways to include local community in design decisions in order to relate to community preferences, values and needs. The paper stresses the idea that including the community in the design brief helps the infill project to be deeply related to the context and the local community, thus increasing its chances of success. The paper deploys an Egyptian infill experience carried out by Agha Khan Trust of Culture (AKTC) in Al Darb Al Ahmar –Aslam neighborhood- a historical residential area in Islamic Cairo, assessing the processes followed by AKTC to include the community in the infill design process, and whether the results succeeded in meeting community preferences, values and needs.