Re-Questioning Green Architecture in Egypt: A Need, a Movement or a Style?

Abstract

Green architecture is considered the contemporary architectural paradigm. Amid threats of the lack of non-renewable energy, the calls for environmental sustainability and sustainable development, being ‘green’ is becoming an aspiration as well as a threat for many architects. Architects to a wide extent are required to adopt one sort of being ‘green’ in their contemporary additions to the built environment. However, very limited differentiations are subjected to the difference between ‘sustainable architecture’, ‘environmentally-friendly architecture’, and ‘green architecture’. This is one side of the debate; however, the most important side is, whether this new trend in contemporary Egyptian architecture is a need, a movement, or merely a style. The other important query is whether ‘sustainable architecture’ is becoming a commodity to fulfill international claims regardless of how it is implemented. In order to answer those questions, the paper first presents the differences between notions of ‘green architecture’, ‘sustainable architecture’ and ‘environmentally-friendly architecture’ and based on literature review as well as observations from international precedents. Afterwards, those three notions are explored and analyzed in the Egyptian context to understand where precisely the claimed sustainable or environmentally friendly buildings in Egypt stand in relation to the outcomes of the literature review. Finally, the need for following those notions in Egypt are re-questioned, in order to explore whether the claims for sustainability are becoming a commodity, especially in the shadows of the misuse of previously discussed slogans.