“The Alexandrian” is the latest outcome of architect and artist Mohamed Gohar’s lifetime project “Description of Alexandria,” which kicked off in 2013. 

The idea of the project was to create a digital platform and to safeguard and document the intangible and tangible cultural heritage of Alexandria through sketches as well as social history and joined research efforts with people who share the same passion for the ancient cosmopolitan city in which he grew up.

His sketches depict the essence of the city — the blue tramway, the key signature architecture designs, and the forgotten entrances of old buildings and their cultural significance. Indeed Gohar’s visual and written documentation of the city is a rare artistic experience.

“The Alexandrian is a research project that is both written and visual and aims to spot the social attitude of contemporary Alexandrian society and its impact on the built environment. It is about the alterations that the individual makes to serve his needs, which lack the connection that protects the rights of the rest of the community, resulting in chaos. This is what we live now in Alexandria,” he told Ahram Online.

“The nice thing about the output of this project,” he added, “is that you see it and cannot say it’s good or bad because it depicts the negative and positive aspects all in the same frame. This reflects reality because when you walk in Alexandria, sometimes you do not know if you are sad or happy; there is a mixture between the good and the bad,” he concluded.

Gohar is going to teach his latest project at the Marseille School of Architecture in France soon.