Megawra – BEC is excited to invite you all to a webinar to introduce and discuss the main concepts of the “Glossary of the Street” workshop. In this webinar, three invited speakers will present how they prepared glossaries for other cities.

Glossary of the Street embraces that the city changes, the street transforms, therefore it is not possible to depend on singular definitions, assumptions, and a stagnant set of rules that regulate it. It also embraces the need to revisit the knowledge and experience that Megawra has built in al-Khalifa and Historic Cairo, in order to better address its work on the streets and the neighborhood in the future.

The goal is to derive the definitions from living, belonging, dealing with, and being part of the streets. Through descriptions based on use, time, labour, functionality, and so on, the aim is to come up with other definitions that will produce a differentiated understanding of the street.

This webinar is one of the several phases of our work towards the “Glossary of the Street”; an ongoing collaborative and participatory research into what constitutes the street in al-Khalifa. This work is organised by Megawra, and Merve Bedir, as part of the Athar Lina initiative, funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and in partnership with Land and civilisation compositions, Aformal academy, Tabdeel, and the ministry of tourism and antiquities.

Webinar date and schedule:

(3 October 2020, 1 pm)

-Online meeting with other glossaries (10-15 minutes each, 1:15 hours in total):

Introduction Ahmed Tarek al-Ahwal (Megawra al-Khalifa, & Tabdeel);

and Merve Bedir (Land and Civilization Compositions and Aformal Academy): Glossary of the Street Speakers Pelin Derviş (İstanbul): Becoming Istanbul Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty (CRIT and SEA, Mumbai): Transactional Objects and Gurgaon Glossaries Sandi Hilal (Daar, Stockholm): Collective Glossary

Conversation -10 Minutes Break -Workshop introduction and conversation with workshop participants (30 minutes)

To register please fill in this form: https://bit.ly/300vifZ

Aformal Academy and Land and Civilization Compositions Merve Bedir is an architect based in Hong Kong/Shenzhen. Her work focuses on the relationship between urban transformation and public space, connecting architectural technologies, law, and urban politics. She continues to work further on the infrastructures of hospitality and mobility. Merve Bedir is an adjunct assistant professor in Hong Kong University Department of Architecture, Division of Landscape Architecture, and a founding partner of Land and Civilization Compositions. She is also a co-founder of Aformal Academy (focused on experimental pedagogies in Pearl River Delta region), a founding member of Mutfak مطبخ Workshop (focused on migration and Kitchen as cultural space in Gaziantep), and a founding member of Center for Spatial Justice in Istanbul. Merve Bedir holds a Ph.D. from Delft University of Technology, and a BArch from Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

Ahmed Tarek works in the field of urban management, specifically urban water management, and urban mobility. Ahmed works as an urban researcher in partnership with Megawra, on the issues of urban mobility, water management and land governance. He is also a co-founder and project coordinator at Tabdeel, the center for bicycle and pedestrian urbanism in Egypt, as well as Trickool for water management and technologies. He used to work as the urban program coordinator in Megawra, and as an urban researcher with Copenhagenize, for bicycle urbanism, and with the eco-citizen world map project. He holds a Msc. of Urban management and development from the Institute of Housing and urban development Studies (IHS), Rotterdam, and a BSc. in Architecture from Cairo University.