HERFA project

The first station in HERFA project was in Abdulrahman street in 2018. The workshop was funded by the Arab Council for Social Science. It aimed to document the craftspeople’ stories about urban transformation and crafts changes throughout 50 years. With the participants, we drew maps based on the interviews and manual surveys which showed the crafts related workshops, buildings usage and space morphology during the last 50 years. The outcome of that workshop was an 11 minutes documentary, maps and an article that you can find here. The participants described the project as an exceptional experience where they got the opportunity to work directly with the community and that they -then- realized the importance of the documentation and analysis phase that has to precede any acts of design or interventions.

The second workshop was in 2020 in Naqada in Upper Egypt. It was funded by Goethe institute and Robert Bosch cultural managers and targeting students from Upper Egypt. It was an ideation workshop to develop a memory wall that integrates technology which allows us to document and tell stories about textile weaving using looms in ‘Phillip’s house’ -a historical house in Naqada- that has multiple looms and workspaces in it. Most of the participants were females from upper Egypt, the participants were geographically close to the craft but did not know much about it. Through the workshops they came to value the traditional craft and came up with great ideas to document and narrate the stories around it. Find the workshop documentary here.