Echoes of a Manifesto
Cairo, Egypt.
•
Archival Processing in Architecture
20250226 - 01 Waveform
•
An archive of a building: the layered narrative of its creation, scripted by multiple hands and shaped by diverse perspectives. A record of ambition, negotiation, and realisation—a process that begins long before the first drawing is made.
The archival story of a building often starts with a dream: a patron’s vision expressed in an initial request, found in an ambitious letter or a statement in a meeting note—perhaps the first document in the building’s archival set.
Over time, this initial aspiration is contrasted with the building’s final physical, morphological presence. The archive then becomes a testament to the process of becoming.
Enclosed within these records are a series of documented events that chronicle ideological conflicts, agreements reached, conflicts endured, and obstacles overcome—moments that all contribute to the articulation of a building in time.
Sets of drawings, holding among their creases marks of negotiations—some adorned with official agreement signatures, others annotated with spontaneous sketches and handwritten notes. Lines drawn with confidence, others with hesitation. Drawing languages that become discernible through rigorous analysis.
Photographs that lock time in stills, documenting progress; others capture moments of pride. Images from the first day of construction are found next to photos of the inauguration ceremony years later. Visual records of workers on-site, architects visiting, and patrons in dialogue with professionals.
Beyond the tangible, the archive showcases the intangible: budgets, specifications, and material quantities, but also discussions on qualitative values, debates over elements, and the architects’ synthesis of ideas into manifestos.
Archival documents are fragments constructing not only the history of a building but also the evolving discourse of architecture itself—read across the available mediums and only understood through thorough processing.
