Ramses Wissa Wassef Arts Center

Giza, Egypt

Near the pyramids at Giza, the centre was founded in the early 1950s by the late architect Ramses Wissa Wassef as a weaving school. It has since evolved to comprise workshops and showrooms, a pottery and sculpture museum, houses and farm buildings, constructed entirely of mud brick. For Wissa Wassef, vaulted and domed mud brick structures represented something quintessentially Egyptian as these forms had been adopted in turn by Paranoiac, Coptic and Islamic civilisations. The choice of this traditional technology also reflected his desire to transmit the values of handicraft to succeeding generations in a rapidly industrialising country. The jury commended the centre for "the beauty of its execution, the high value of its objectives, the social impact of its activities as well as the power of its influence as an example."

Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture