Abdelhalim Ibrahim AbdelhalimDr. Abdelhalim has been awarded the Aga Khan Award in 1992 for his project, the Children Park in Al-Syeda Zeinab District, Cairo. Earning of the award was due to the outstanding community participation involved in the project, and its execution by local materials, labor and techniques. He was selected as the 2020 laureate of Tamayouz’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The highest accolade of the Tamayouz Excellence Award awarded to an individual “who have made significant contributions towards humanity and the advancement of architecture and the built environment in the Near East and North Africa” He has received his Ph.D. in architecture from the University of California, Berkley in 1978; a Master’s in architecture from the University of Oregon in 1968; a Graduate Diploma in housing and building technology from Cairo University in 1967, and a Bachelor’s in architecture also from Cairo University in 1963. Over a span of 45 years Dr. Abdelhalim has developed a sound knowledge of working with traditional designs, materials and theories. Under his guidance, CDC Abdelhalim became known for its adoption of such approaches, and its awareness of the historical and cultural settings of each project. He has worked on a significant number of challenging projects with some of the world’s most renowned Architects. One of his major influential publications is “The Building Ceremony: The Regenerative Process of Building, Ph.D. Thesis, University of California- Berkeley, 1978.”Dr. Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim (1941-2021) is a renowned Egyptian architect, urban planner and a former professor of Architectural Design and Theory in Cairo University, Egypt. Founder of CDC (Community Design Collaborative), a private architectural / planning and community development consultancy firm based in Egypt.
ApproachCommunity Design Collaborative (CDC) follows the deep belief in the power of rituals as a guiding force behind various human behaviors and the spaces in which they are enacted and designed to play out. The firm strives for an architecture that brings back these rituals in form of spatial existence by understanding the social and cultural complexities of communities around the world, thus creating an architecture for the people, by the people. We believe architecture is in constant need to incorporate the local context, rituals and customs evident—materially, conceptually, sociologically—and can act as a catalyst for bridging the gap between the architecture and the people creating relationships between nature, society and space. Our firm is considered a constant experimentation of theories involving community based design processes focusing on the important role that cultural ceremonies and rituals play in them.
"One of the most elemental human rituals of all is the transfer of knowledge from one person or one generation to another" - Abdelhalim Ibrahim |
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