Introduction

1France, June 2022. Like every year during this season, the Roland Garros international tennis competition is being broadcast live on television. In the middle of the semi-final match, a young woman, barely in her twenties, enters the centre court, runs towards the net and ties her neck to it. The picture made the rounds in the press. She is seen sitting on her heels, knees on the ground, chest out, chin up, staring into the distance. On her white T-shirt, it says: ‘We have 1028 days left’ (to act against and limit the effects of global warming) (Grohmann 2022). Other actions of this type followed throughout the summer, with the same message, although the countdown formula used has been criticized by contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report as a misinterpretation of the last UN climate report (Toffolet 2022). The name of the group initiating these actions is ‘Last renovation’ (in French, dernière rénovation). In a country like France, the residential and tertiary sectors cause one-fifth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This is enough to turn the renovation of housing into the main focus for a group of activists seeking to fight both the causes and the effects of climate change. For the same reason, it will be the focus on this text, too.

2While in temperate climates we often speak of ‘fuel poverty’ or ‘energy poverty’ regarding households struggling to heat their homes, the effects of climate change bring with them the threat of what Harriet Thomson and her colleagues call ‘cooling poverty’ (Thomson et al. 2019). Referring to the inability of individuals to enjoy an environment sufficiently mild to maintain health, this vulnerability is even more obvious in places in the Global South, like in Cairo, which is the case discussed in this paper.

3Beyond the fact that buildings in poor condition use more energy to keep people warm and cool, it is relevant to look at buildings when we are interested in climate resilience (Barroca, DiNardo, and Mboumoua, 2013) in cities for at least two reasons. On the one hand, buildings store heat received during the day and release it at night. Urban areas are dense, and thus there are few possibilities for hot air to be blown away, which is what creates the heat island effect. On the other hand, people alter the buildings that house them to cope with the extreme heat. Thus, the built fabric is both an aggravating factor in the urban heat island effect and is what people modify to protect themselves from the heat. This makes climate resilience an architectural issue, articulating both the urban and the building scale, which justifies having a closer look at how people actually deal with the issue of refurbishing their homes to make them thermally comfortable (Ghodbane 2021).

4Renovating a house or flat, regardless of the scale of the work, necessarily involves several people with different skills and responsibilities, including counsellors, initiators, retailers, builders etc. Even in materially precarious contexts, such as poor areas in Cairo, buildings are constructed and maintained collectively, and do-it-yourself initiatives are not as popular. One rather calls a handyman to do repairs. Thus, when a homeowner initiates a project, from tiny repairs to, for example, the addition of a floor to the building, they look for support, tools, people, information and financial means in order to develop an action plan. How do they seek the expertise they need to design, plan and implement their project? How is this organized? What counts in their decisions? Who participates? How do people search for the means to establish and achieve their plan?

5This paper is an outcome of a larger research project that I have conducted using the methodological tools of sociology, that is, ethnographic data collection and analysis, participation in events with and for architects in Cairo, interviews and participant observation at a sample of homes in various neighbourhoods to investigate construction and maintenance practices in ordinary residential buildings in Cairo. My aim was to research the intermediaries who take part in an architectural project, in line with the work of Graeme Macrae and Samuel Parker (2002) on the undagi in Balinese architecture. These scholars have demonstrated that rather than involving one person embodying architectural knowledge, architectural practice is dynamic and includes individuals with changing skills and status. Therefore, these two authors consider architectural knowledge to be socially located and circulating.

6Although I investigated nine homes in different parts of the city, in this contribution I will present only cases of people who worked with architects in the past but who ultimately decided to do without them. Their views provide an idea of residents’ priorities and of what architects sometimes fail to deliver. This focus highlights the importance of mediation when it comes to improving housing, which remains a key issue in the fight against climate change. While they demonstrated a great deal of knowledge about housing renovation and climate adaptation, the architects I encountered and read about during my fieldwork1 shared their frustrations with the obstacles that prevent them from putting their expertise at the service of people. Eventually, the character most often cited when speaking of construction is the entrepreneur, or building contractor; in Arabic, muqawil. The definition of his role2 happens to be very versatile, which explains his presence on most residential construction sites, including my case studies. The case of the muqawil enables us to define expertise not as the possession of specific knowledge but as the likelihood of someone’s knowledge being recognized and applied in its intended context. The muqawil provides a way of thinking about the issue of mediation between experts and residents, a central element in implementing climate-change adaptation measures such as thermal renovation.

7As the young activist on the tennis court reminds us, the climate emergency requires that we seriously consider how people shape their built environment today in order to enable climate-resilient renovation and construction to actually take place.

Builders and Renovators without Architects

Magda

8Magda and her husband are two engineers in their fifties. They live in a large apartment they own in Garden City, which is a central neighbourhood that used to be affluent. Magda put a lot of effort in thoroughly renovating it, including electricity and plumbing, masonry work (she created an opening in three walls) and, obviously, finishing (floors, ceilings and painting). Choosing the right people for the right tasks was a central issue of the project. As Magda said:

– I know what I wanted, and I lived (‘isht) [enough to know what I want now]. … I didn’t bring an architect, a real one, who would develop ideas and so on, but one who would do whatever I wanted.
– Do you mean like a mu‘allim [master mason]?
– No, not really, he would be dressed up and everything, he would be a graduate in architecture. I mean, it’s not important. I could have taken an architect who would have made a drawing and everything, but it would have been more expensive. I have a friend in Tagammu‘ [Tagammu‘ al-Khamis, literally ‘the Fifth Settlement’, a satellite town and gated community in Cairo], who is working with an architect like that and who doesn’t let her do what she wants [she laughs]. I didn’t want that. I wanted to look for the things, to discuss the feasibility, and then he carries out the work. (7 September 2018)

9For Magda, architects’ distinctive qualities conflict with her wish to implement her own ideas. In this way, her position challenges architects’ claimed monopoly on the design that should be implemented in such a project and when improving the thermal qualities of a house. When architects speak about climate in the public sphere – in the press or in books, for example – they focus most often on the technical aspects of climate adaptation in buildings, both low- and high-tech. This includes, for example, the use of thermal insulation, solar panels, natural ventilation and natural building materials such as rammed earth or lime. It also includes the celebration of local traditional architectural features such as the mashrabiyya (wooden window lattices), courtyards and air shafts (Vellinga 2013). Mediation between experts and inhabitants is essential to assess both the relevance and adaptation of these techniques in context.

10Magda carefully selected the person who would work for her, following criteria that did not directly include the technical competences of her interlocutor but rather a similar social background. By choosing a graduated architect, she ensured that this person potentially shared similar standards of what a ‘good house’ is. In this case, the social connection between the interlocutors came before (alleged or known) technical competences. This justifies the urgency of examining more closely in which conditions housing renovation techniques are applicable and thus, by extension, how and where climatic adaptation of the built environment can take place.

Sawsan

11Magda’s experience resonates with that of Sawsan, who, at first, seemed to have bet on the same implicit ‘strategy’, as she started working with an architect who was part of her circle of friends for the construction of her villa in the Fifth Settlement. Contrary to Magda’s friend, Sawsan was determined enough to actively intervene in the design of her house. She insisted on natural ventilation and natural light but avoided direct sunlight to prevent overheating. To her, these concerns were absent from the architect’s plans:

He [the architect] brought me a plan, but I [sound of paper being teared up], all of this is rubbish. I brought my plans and a corrector. I removed walls, and I put another one, open here, etc. …
In the architect’s plan, the whole staircase was made of glass windows that couldn’t be opened. In addition to the heat it is likely to produce, how could I clean all this glass? It was beautiful coloured glass, but it was not practical. (1 October 2018)

12What Sawsan says about the design choice of the architect, i.e. the prioritization of aesthetic concerns over climatic constraints by using large glass panels, echoes the assumption that architects’ clients are only interested in beauty (al-gamal) or looks (al-manzar) and are not concerned with the improvement of the thermal qualities of their homes (assuming also that these aspects cannot be combined). Sawsan, however, did not match this expectation, and she insisted on the experience and knowledge gained from previous renovation projects she undertook in her other properties.

13The same faithful muqawil, Ali, worked for her on these sites and also for the rest of the family. He was actually the muqawil of Sawsan’s brother-in-law, who is an architect. Her son, who joined us during the interview, insisted on the distinction between their muqawil and the kind that one finds in poorer neighbourhoods. Such a distinction, again, was frequently repeated in the conversations I had with my interlocutors during my fieldwork.

14The relationship between the owner and those who concretely carry out the owner’s project is crucial to the undertaking, which means that it is also important in better adapting housing to future climatic constraints. The experiences of Magda and Sawsan show to what extent the social connection between individuals, or their social distance, plays a significant role in determining the means available to make their project come true.

The Architects

15The architects I met advocated the specificity of their profession in various ways. This might not be directly related to the climate adaptation of the built environment, but to actually make thermal renovation come true, we need to understand the existing gap between residents – who actively engage in the improvement of their housing conditions, including thermal comfort – and architects, who have climatic expertise but struggle to implement it when working for their clients.

16The image of the architect who obtains their knowledge from abstract theories echoes a comment my host made during my fieldwork. Umm Rania stated: ‘Ah, but the muhandisiin [architects and engineers], they are into theory; they do not do anything with their hands. They are into computers and calculations’ (field notes, 6 April 2018). Later, as I was sitting in the hara (here, a dead-end street with a semi-private use) enjoying the sun on a fresh autumn morning, my 21-year-old neighbour Hatem asked me about the research I was conducting. When I talked about architects, his face suddenly lit up, and he said: ‘Oh, yes, I see, a guy who makes drawings on a computer and all. I know one in Manshiyet Naser’.

17In this particular case, the symmetry between the effort my interlocutors made to distinguish their own function as muhandis from the depiction of architects provided by my neighbours showed that the exclusion is somewhat reciprocal: the architect’s work does not engage with the people in Cairo’s existing buildings, but the people do not acknowledge the relevance of the architect’s work to their situation either. In such a situation, how can architectural climate expertise find relevant ground for application and opportunities for improving itself when few people, even educated ones, are aware of the role of an architect?

18Architects are caught in contradictions: their opportunities to implement projects largely depend on clients for whom they sometimes show little consideration, and from whom they symbolically and socially dissociate themselves. The image of the architect as supervisor and master of the project contrasts with the actual situation of structural dependency – with their clients, for example – in which architects find themselves.

19In sum, there are multiple barriers between residents and architects that prevent the taking of efficient action towards better adapting Cairo’s built environment to future climatic conditions. These obstacles take several forms: they can be material, as hiring an architect is costly and they might impose a high standard of execution, which is expensive as well, but they can also be symbolic. Eventually, people’s perception of the architect as an intellectual can inhibit interactions.

The Muqawil

20The muqawil does not seem to experience the same obstacles that architects face in their relationship with people or clients. While the word muqawil translates into entrepreneur or contractor, the functions it refers to considerably change according to the situation. As they work with socially diverse households, while they themselves are sometimes part of the working class, muqawilin’s (plural) socio-geographical mobility contributes to making them accessible. And unlike architects, the fact that they are devoid of an intellectual aura and theoretical projects likely enables them to address domestic considerations in a concrete manner. Moreover, they are less likely to hamper the owner’s decision process in terms of design.

21Some consider the muqawil to be an investor, i.e. any individual who has capital to invest in a real estate project. This is especially the case in rather well-off neighbourhoods, but not only there. On the other hand, when one speaks of a muqawil in a more working-class context, the image and skills of the entrepreneur are quite different, as architect Mahmud Hilmi explains:

We have a big problem here in Egypt. The awareness of the architect’s scope of knowledge is close to zero [nervous laugh]. Those who understand are maybe 5 per cent of the people. But the majority has no idea. If they want to build, they go to the muqawil and ask him to build. He wouldn’t go to an architect in any case. He would bring somebody to dig up the ground [he gasps] and a muqawil with a libda [a felt hat], a muqawil wearing a galabiyya [full-length gown], the picture of the primitive muqawil, the very simple muqawil, and he would do the building. There’s no concern about who’ll do the design [my emphasis]. They want the building to be as high as possible and as large as possible. I’m talking about a certain sector of course, the simple people. In the villa, it would be a bit better. (24 April 2019)

22The muqawil as described in this extract ticks all the boxes of being the opposite of the architect. He builds without any design consideration and without any purpose other than that of maximizing financial profit. This contrast is not only embodied by the muqawil himself but also by his so-called traditional clothes and the social background of those he supposedly serves, namely the ‘simple people’. In a nutshell, depending on the social environment in which he intervenes, the muqawil is a business manager, a site supervisor or a mu‘allim. It is this broad spectrum of potential roles that makes him accessible and enables the muqawil and his skills to circulate. This indeterminacy of the muqawil’s scope somehow echoes the versatility of the architect’s functions (Chadoin 2013), which makes him appear as the architect’s alter ego. The qualities that make him omnipresent are assets that those embodying building expertise on the urban climate lack, preventing them from implementing a climate-resilient city through housing improvement.

From the Building to the City’s Climate

23The ability to create ‘a micro-climate on one’s own’ at home depends on the resources available. The importance of individuals’ social networks in the quest for intellectual, material and practical resources when planning projects to improve domestic spaces illustrates well the fact that architectural agency is distributed between several hands and brains rather than embodied in the architect’s character. Social connections rely on tacitly shared conceptions about what a good house is; in other words, it relies on actors’ silent agreement on what is desirable. In this sense, the thermal environment is an intentional collective construction that follows existing social patterns. This acknowledges people’s agency in shaping and controlling their thermal environment following specific logics and contexts. Even if heat rules the life of Cairo’s people, it affects them differently depending on whether they live in a wealthy district or a more working-class area (Ghodbane 2019b; Roesler, Kobi, and Stieger 2022). Microclimates differ according to the location and urban fabric of a neighbourhood, and possibilities to mitigate overheating are not the same. This is visible in Figure 1, a map showing the built-up surface temperature in Cairo.

Figure 1. The densest built-up areas overlap with those with the highest land surface temperature (1 August 2018).

24If we compare this image with an aerial view of Cairo, we see that the pockets in the satellite image where the heat is greatest correspond roughly to the most densely built-up areas. The very dense areas are home mainly to a relatively low-income population. In contrast, the areas in lighter colours tend to be upper-middle-class. There, the buildings are lower and the streets wider. Trees and parks create breathing spaces in the urban fabric, which help moderate the micro-climate. Knowing that people experience the heat differently according to the environment they live in has material consequences for their homes and their ability to shape them in relation to the surrounding urban micro-climates. For example, if the outdoor environment is a calm, tiny garden that is cool in the evening instead of a busy, dusty street, windows will not be used in the same way, which impacts the indoor thermal environment. Considering climate realities at the neighbourhood or building and housing scale makes it possible to understand environmental inequalities in context, through the prism of adjustment and accommodation practices in people’s domestic sphere.

Conclusion

25In this article, I have focused on individual initiatives because this is where the balance of power between those who take part in the maintenance of the built environment is potentially favourable to the dissemination of architectural knowledge and climate-responsive design on a large scale. I have done so by shifting our gaze from architects to architectural practice and to how this is embodied beyond architects’ profession and understood among city dwellers and most non-expert residents eager to refurbish their homes according to climate demands. The same can be said about expertise in urban climate management. In other words, in the case of renovation projects implemented without the help of an architect, architectural practice is not absent; rather, it is shared by multiple hands, which enlarges the pool of resources available to make projects happen.

26People’s easy access to muqawilin (entrepreneurs or building contractors) exemplifies what architects bemoan, that is, opportunities to exert their skills to improve homes, including in terms of climate-responsive design. In this sense, expertise is in the eye of the beholder. Regardless of the construction quality or the design of what ends up being built, this shows interesting channels to explore in view to implement constructive solutions to overheating. A lot of existing knowledge (related to climate or to architecture) struggles to prove its relevance on the ground to the people it is dedicated to. This lies at the origin of frustrations that architects express in interviews and sometimes in their publications. Therefore, mediation is also a central issue when thinking in terms of action. It sheds light on the logics and drivers of renovation that exist among residents and homeowners when they plan their projects. Looking closely at how people renovate their house equates to mapping expertise as it is identified by those who produce the city instead of locating it in the hands of the experts alone. Mitigating the effects of climate change simply cannot be achieved without addressing the actually existing forces that produce the city at all scales, especially the already established Cairo as opposed to the new settlements.