2025 - Archival research on Edmond Pauty's Urban Conservation Proposal for Islamic Cairo, by Lama Said
This project investigates a proposal for the conservation of the historic city of Cairo developed by Edmond Pauty, Architecte-Expert at the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe—the body responsible for the conservation of Islamic and Coptic monuments in Egypt (1881-1953). It seeks to shed light on both the author and the context of the proposal for the conservation of Cairo’s Islamic core drawing from archival material.
Lama will visit three archives. The Archives de l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts, where Pauty was a student, housed at the French National Archives in Paris, will shed light on his education as a Beaux-arts student. The Bibliothèque Nationale de France contains Pauty’s published works including his original proposal for the defence of historic cities formulated during his time in Morocco. These sources reveal the context in which Pauty developed his ideas that would later ‘travel’ to Egypt. The National Archives in London contain records from Egypt’s urban planning authority, offering insights into the urban planning discourse in Egypt at the time.
The research forms part of Lama’s PhD thesis that examines the impact of colonialism on built heritage conservation and management in post-colonial Egypt. Lama is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh where she specialises in the historic built environment.
