Cairo Street Design Documentation
Cairo collective Archief Cairo is documenting everyday designs found on streets, from plastic bags to hieroglyphic presses, receiving 165 views. The project captures grassroots creativity and street-level design inspiration in the Egyptian capital.
- Archief Cairo was founded in 2018 by Hana Neuman, Maram Al Refaei, Sherine Salla, and Ryan Vicente Lee Grees, who met at the German University in Cairo. The collective's work began as an effort to explore Cairo's non-academic design scene from a street-level perspective. - The collective's documentation of everyday design extends to a variety of objects, including car stickers, street sounds, shop signage, and even items found in the trash, all viewed through the five senses. - One of Archief Cairo's significant projects is a collaboration with the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology (IFAO) to revive the world's only letterpress that can print with hieroglyphics. This printing press, housed in a room from 1907, includes over 7,500 hieroglyphic characters designed by an Egyptologist. - In November 2023, Archief Cairo collaborated with MacGuffin magazine on a workshop called "Il7arf" (the letter), which brought together around 15 designers and writers to investigate vernacular typography in the Middle East. - The collaboration with MacGuffin resulted in a publication titled "Cairo Archives," which showcases the findings from their workshop and explores typographical archives to determine what should be preserved. One participant noted that in a city where things often disappear, "Archiving is a form of resistance." - Another key initiative by the collective is "Makhtout," a project that examines Arabic-Islamic manuscripts and their relevance to contemporary graphic design. This project was initiated in early 2020 as a response to the Eurocentric focus of design education in Egypt. - The group's work is driven by a desire to give a voice to the streets and to understand and reinterpret Egyptian identity in a modern context, often mixing it with other cultures. - Beyond documentation, Archief Cairo is actively working to build a stronger print culture in the city through collaborations with organizations like the Cairo Print Club, which focuses on screen and risograph printing.
