Mostafa Salem, an architect greatly interested in conserving Cairo, could restore the 115-year-old Tiring (pronounced tee-ring) Building in Attaba Square in central Cairo to its original beauty in a few months.
"It is not an easy job at all; it is actually challenging given the volume of harm that was done to the interior and exterior of the building and to the infrastructure," Salem said.
In 1910, Victor Tiring, an Austrian department store mogul from Vienna who came to Egypt from Istanbul in the late 19th century, financed the construction of the building. The building was to become a state-of-the-art Mediterranean department store in the capital's most affluent neighbourhood at the time, Green Attaba Square (The Green Doorstep Square).
Oscar Horowitz, a prominent Czech architect of the time, completed the construction and interior design of the building, which opened to the public in 1912.
The five-floor building, with its four unique Atlas statues carrying a glass globe on top, was among the first department stores in the city and one of the first to sell imported high-end items to the city's well-off shoppers.
However, the building's beauty and elegance did not last long.
In 1915, British authorities confiscated the properties of Austro-Hungarian nationals in Egypt during Britain's war with the Habsburg Empire in World War I.
Consequently, Tiring liquidated the department store and left the country in 1920.
Transferring the ownership of the building to other leading merchants in Cairo proved complicated.
Eventually, the building fell into incremental disrepair. By mid-century, random retail vendors and small-scale merchants had taken over.
"Today, as we struggle to restore the building's beauty, the government is investigating whether trade activities currently present inside and outside the building are legal to ensure that our work on the building will not be infringed," Salem said.
The building's inauguration, tentatively set for July, would constitute a crowning achievement for Salem, who has done much to salvage the city's late 19th and early 20th century buildings.
"The human-city interaction remains my work's founding principle," Salem said.
He explained that he adopted that principle while studying architecture at the university and later in urban workshops and competitions.
He said cities should please their residents, giving them a sense of affinity.
Born in 1988 in one of the residential compounds that sprawl the city's east and west, Salem did not experience a relationship with the 'city' as he grew up.
"It was not just cut out for that; it was not designed for pedestrians to just walk around," he recalled.
Egypt's early versions of satellite quarters were much less friendly than their newer counterparts. They hardly felt like neighbourhoods.
Commuting entirely depended on private cars, with very little public transport.
Salem, who studied walkable cities, decided that Cairo deserved a chance. He was aware of the challenges such an initiative entailed, including the general decline in the quality of architecture nationwide and others related to population density, especially in the city's older quarters.
"Other challenges relate to pollution and other climate change factors, the lack of efficient and environment-friendly public transport, and the incompatibility of old buildings with modern housing," he said.
Salem cited the staggering number of grey, dusty, and square AC units popping up amid elegant early 20th-century facades. In the autumn of 2020, he shared on his well-followed social media pages some ideas on how to work around the AC intervention in buildings designed by architects such as Antonio Lasciac, Mario Rossi, Robert Williams, and others.
Salem was motivated to implement his ideas after his Instagram post received much attention. This gave birth to Cairo Makeover, a project he describes as concerned with renovation, preservation, architectural awareness, and human connectivity.
"People need and deserve to know the significance—and for that matter, the stories—behind the buildings of the city," he said. "This could certainly make a difference," he added.
Adapting to climate change is also part of the Cairo Makeover scheme. "We need to integrate the architectural concepts that liberate us from overusing air-conditioning techniques, just like in the original Nubian architectural style," he said. "We need to think of Cairo's future from the perspective of maintaining its stunning architectural heritage and with the view to make it—or perhaps remake it—a green city," he added.
Salem said communicating with the National Organisation for Urban Harmony opened the door for a series of projects—not all focused on 'famous buildings'—leading up to the Tiring Building, which he started working on in March.
The lack of original designs and sufficient documentation challenges Salem's work. "I want to take it back to the way it was," he said. Archival material and IT solutions are helping, he added.
For Salem, though the Tiring Building may be "a landmark stop" in the journey of Cairo Makeover, it is a beginning and not an end. "There is so much to be done," he said. "Cairo deserves a good facelift," he added.
By the time the Tiring Building is reinaugurated, the government will have released a larger scheme for downtown Cairo.
In press statements earlier in April, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said a comprehensive scheme is being developed to attract national and foreign investments to downtown Cairo. Madbouly noted that many downtown buildings have been vacated after several ministers relocated to the New Administrative Capital.
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