Saving Heliopolis Style

We have an Egyptian a unique architectural style that does not exist anywhere in the world ; this style is called "Heliopolis Style". As you can see from the name , this early 20th century style was used primarily at Heliopolis area. You can see its remains now especially in the Korba street standing against the aggression of the growing greed and modern tasteless architectural styles. The Heliopolis style is also known as Neo-Islamic Style.

Heliopolis 1931

When I see these huge building I always wonder why construction companies and contractors do not adopt this style preferring foreign styles like Spanish and Mediterranean styles  , these buildings provide residential and commercial units alike in a very elegant way. I do not get it at all , it is not about our Egyptian Heliopolis style but also the famous Baroque style . I do not get why we are ignoring those wonderful styles which will not cost the construction companies a thing considering the big prices they charge the people with.

What puzzles me is that those who designed those buildings were foreigners and yet they respected this huge cultural mix of Egypt adding where as now most of designs in new cities like 6th of October or New Cairo are modern Western designs made by Egyptian designers !! I do not get it.

Anyhow I believe we should protect the Heliopolis Style and what remains from it in Egypt as much as we all could.  I had wanted to speak about this matter from a long but I always forgot to but thank to this wonderful post I was encouraged to write this post which I hope would encourage some architectural designer will read this post and adopt the Heliopolis Style.

Photo sources : Cairohk , Moon-Watcher ,Carine&Tom, Magdy_Tanious and Niveen Fouda

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