Shahira Mehrez Apartment
Cairo, Egypt
"The first of Fathy's residential projects upon his return to Egypt is small in scale but has a combined effect that far exceeds the physical size of the area concerned. In order to personalize her own apartment on the sixth floor of a building designed by another architect, Shahira Mehrez asked Fathy to try to work within the existing framework to create a more varied and individual series of spaces for her. Using the central stairway of the building as a dividing line between the areas set aside for a private apartment and a commercial space to be used for the sale of traditional Egyptian arts and crafts, Fathy turns the seemingly inflexible restrictions of exterior wall locations, structure and circulation space to his own advantage. By using variations in vertical scale, as well as level changes and highly detailed surfaces and forms to particularize each zone, the architect manages to expand the feeling of space in what might otherwise become an impossibly congested rabbit-warren of rooms. The private apartment itself, which is shown in some detail in an otherwise incomplete plan, consists of a majlis-type sitting room with a fireplace and a small library. In addition, there is a similar sitting space reproduced on an outside patio, a formal dorqa'a with another fireplace, a kitchen, and a master bedroom suite which includes a dressing room and a skylit sunken Japanese bath. The spatial variety, richness and charm of this apartment, which is also greatly enhanced by Miss Mehrez's choice of furnishings, carpets and fabrics, makes it difficult to believe that it is located in Dokki, in the heart of urban Cairo."

Source:

Steele, James. 1989. The Hassan Fathy Collection. A Catalogue of Visual Documents at the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Bern, Switzerland: The Aga Khan Trust for Culture. 51.
Location
Dokki, Cairo, Egypt
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Events
1967
Variant Names
Mehrez Apartment
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