Bazar Abbas: Recovery Lab of Port Said January 2023 - January 2025

BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, with its local partners in Egypt, has initiated a two-year project to contribute to the recovery process of Port Said. This project is funded by the British Council's  Cultural Protection Fund (CPF) in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Bazar Abbas: Recovery Lab of Port Said 2023-25

Bazar Abbas is a unique hybrid of local architecture and European modernism that has suffered extensive damage as a result of past conflicts on the Suez Canal. This combined architectural typology is repeated in different shapes and forms all over the city of Port Said, a city with a short yet turbulent history: a history of wars and displacements, prosperity and abandonment, colonialism and resistance, marginalisation and power reclamation and many more. These multiple layers of history have been manifested in the architectural and spatial articulation of the city, as well as within the daily life practices of Port Said residents.

Despite its vulnerable status, the 19th century architectural and urban heritage of Port Said has received little to no recovery measures after suffering in multiple series of wars and conflicts since the mid-20th century until today. Therefore, the project aims to activate the recovery process of the downtown area through the implementation of small-scale, people-centred strategies for urban conservation and development. The initiative takes Bazar Abbas as a catalytic pilot project not only because this building represents an outstanding architectural heritage but also for its indispensable position in the collective memory and identity of the city, interlinked to conflict, resistance, displacement and daily struggles.

The project offers twofold measures by producing direct tangible results like physical reconstruction and urban heritage mapping while at the same time targeting community empowerment. In this context, the partial reconstruction of the Bazaar will preserve its original features, including the timber verandas. In addition, the combined research, education and training initiatives will recapture the collective memory of the Bazar’s socio-cultural importance, preserve and transfer local reconstruction techniques and eventually provide a model for urban heritage recovery in the historic core of Port Said.

Workshops & Training

1. Urban (Heritage) Narrative Workshop
Port Said - 9th to 16thth of March 2023

2. Urban Recovery Planning
Cairo & Port Said - 5th to 14th of September 2023

3. Pilot Restoration 
Port Said - October to December 2023

4. Tourism Training
Port Said - June 2024

5. Closing Event
December 2024

Project  NameBazar Abbas: Recovery Lab of Port Said
Project Lead      BTU Cottbus – Senftenberg
Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Urban Planning
Chair of Landscape Architecture, Prof. Anna Lundqvist
Middle-East-Cooperation Unit
Project PartnersGalala University
Prof. Dr. Maged Zagow

Al-Yakaniya for Heritage and Arts
Prof. Dr. Alaa El Habashi

Port Said Ala Ademo

Alliance Française de Port-Saïd
Funded bythe British Council's Cultural Protection Fund in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

https://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/culture-development/cultural-protection-fund