DATE: May 02, 2008

CONTACT: Hala F. Nassar, (864) 656-1527
hnassar@clemson.edu

WRITER: Ross Norton, (864) 656-4810
rnorton@clemson.edu

Clemson and Ain Shams University students team up to create plans for Giza

CLEMSON — Egyptian architecture students arrive in Clemson Sunday to team up with their Clemson University partners in landscape architecture to make plans for one of the most sacred sites of the ancient world.

Ain Shams University students from Cairo will spend 10 days on campus and touring South Carolina as they work with their Clemson counterparts on a proposal for an area at the foot of the Giza plateau, home to the Great Pyramids of Giza.

The ongoing partnership reaches a significant milestone this summer when Clemson and Ain Shams professors present their plans to the governor of Giza, who has the authority to implement the ideas.

The transcontinental collaboration started in 2006 when students from the two schools teamed up to provide design solutions to challenges in Luxor, Egypt, where the Avenue of the Sphinxes along the Nile River has experienced centuries of unplanned urban growth. Their proposal for Luxor is currently in the hands of Ahmed Nazif, prime minister of Egypt.

Much like the challenge in Luxor, the students' current project is to find solutions to a rapidly changing urban fabric, this time in an area in the very shadow of the world's most famous pyramids.

According to Clemson landscape architecture professors Hala Nassar and Rob Hewitt, the pyramids of Giza are on top of one plateau and the future site of the New Grand Egyptian Museum is on another nearby plateau. Between them and to the east a sprawling and unplanned fabric has developed over the past 50 years.

According to Nassar, who used her academic contacts in Egypt to establish the collaboration, the students and their faculty leaders are seeking practical solutions to the unplanned sprawl, but solutions that will remain sensitive to the cultural and economic needs of the residents.

"This is an amazing opportunity for the students of these two universities, a chance to have an impact on an ancient site," Nassar said. "They're working and studying in a place where they leave their footprints on thousands of years of civilization."

This is the second trip to Clemson for the Ain Shams architecture students. The landscape architecture students of Clemson University have made three site visits to Egypt — in February 2007, July 2007 and February 2008 — where they visited Luxor, Giza and Cairo.

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