Preface

• I was born in January 1915, to a father of rural origin and a mother of Turkish descent.
• I grew up in the Sayeda Zeinab district, in Geneinet Kamish, through my primary and secondary schooling (at the Mohamed Ali Primary School and the Khedive Ismail Secondary School, both in that district). It was there that I learned what belonging means.
• We moved to Zamalek when my father was chosen as private secretary to King Fuad.
• I then joined the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, where my professors Ali Gabr, Hassan Shafei and Sherif Noman taught me what architecture is. I graduated in 1938 with distinction.
• I was appointed engineer at the Government Buildings Department and worked with Abu Bakr Khairat and Ahmed Sidky. In the afternoons I worked in the office of Ali Gabr and then that of Ahmed Sidky. Each of them had a share in shaping my identity on its practical side.
• I travelled to America on a scientific and practical mission and obtained my master's degree in 1947.
• On my return I went into private practice with my brother and colleague Salah Zeitoun, alongside our government work. The partnership lasted about forty years.
• Over half a century I prepared the drawings for, and supervised the construction of, a great variety of buildings in Egypt and the Arab world, the most important of them numbering about one hundred and twenty. The national projects I designed and supervised include the combined service units in the Egyptian countryside, Cairo International Airport, Cairo Stadium, the preliminary plan of 10th of Ramadan City, the planning and architectural work for the salvage of the Philae temples at Aswan, and the Nasser Institute for Research and Treatment.
• Other important projects include the pasteurised-milk plants at El-Kobba and Damietta, Manshiet El-Bakry Hospital, the Schindler elevator plant in Heliopolis and the Safir Hotel in Dokki, besides a large number of apartment buildings and private villas, among them the Murad Wahba building and the residential tower of the Canal Housing Society.
• I received the State Incentive Prize for excellence in the architectural arts in 1963, the second architect to receive it; a certificate of appreciation from the Second Architects' Conference in 1986 for my role in developing contemporary Egyptian architecture, establishing noble traditions for its practice, and teaching and training successive generations of architects; and the State Merit Prize in the Arts in 1990.
• My decorations: the Order of the Republic, fourth class (1955); the Order of the Republic, third class (1963); the Order of Sciences and Arts, first class (1963 and 1982); the Order of Sciences and Arts, first class (1990); and the Order of Sport, first class (1986).
• I am a member of the Housing and Reconstruction Division of the Specialised National Councils and of the Egyptian Planning Society, and was formerly a board member of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, a member of the Architecture Committee of the Supreme Council for Culture, and a board member of the Arab Bureau for Designs and Engineering Consultancy.
• In 1992 the State Information Service included me in the national encyclopaedia of Egyptians who played a prominent role in the country's life.

And now, on to the method and thinking behind my architectural projects, and the various reflections that express that thinking. Perhaps they explain what lay behind my answer when a colleague asked me to sum up the qualities of architecture in a few words. I said:

Simplicity, purity and honesty of expression.

Written in Arabic by Mostafa Shawky. English translation.