DLR Group is a globally recognized design firm assigned to design the expansion of AUC New Cairo's upcoming Extended Education Hub and NextGen Student Living and Learning Spaces, which are part of AUC's visionary Campus 2026 development project, with an ethos of creating spaces that emphasize learning and social development. With over 31 offices worldwide, DLR Group’s expansive talent will be involved in this project, with teams from the United States and Dubai offices working to provide a holistic and integrated design solution.

We sat with Principal and DLR Group Design Director Scott Pryde to learn about the team's design philosophy and inspiration.

What's the significance of this collaboration with AUC?

The collaboration with The American University in Cairo is of significant importance. We were delighted to learn of our involvement in the design of the future campus. The DLR Group team has been working closely with the AUC team and selected consultants to define a clear brief that will respect the future aspirations of the campus and its extended master plan. As an architect, I see this as an essential opportunity to contribute to the success of AUC’s community and create a balanced and harmonious addition to this future environment. 

You’ll be working on the Extended Education Hub and NextGen Student Living and Learning Spaces. What is your primary focus?

Our initial mission is a comprehensive analysis of the existing campus functionality, identifying its achievements and areas of improvement. We have dedicated a significant amount of time in consultation with President Ahmad Dallal, faculty members and various focus groups. This in-depth research has allowed us to gain a holistic understanding of each facet of the campus's components, integrated design elements and spatial relationships to ensure the new structures seamlessly harmonize. Our primary focus is on cultivating a nuanced comprehension of how these new building offers will impact the overall campus and its surrounding community.

How is this project unique from others you’ve worked on?

As an architect, this project feels like an architectural pilgrimage. The vibrant campus has beautiful buildings and landscapes, offering something new to discover everywhere you look. Students clearly love these spaces. A seamless array of buildings and spaces linking the campus as a whole. The importance of considering the project from an outside perspective, understanding how the buildings will respond to their context, reviewing the design guidelines of the existing campus, alongside the levels and general constraints of the site will be an important start to develop a clear strategy of how these design elements will come together. 

What are you looking forward to the most?

The DLR Group is excited to work with the fantastic team on campus, whether they are students or part of the leadership team. We are very much looking forward to developing this project to ensure it captures a deeply rooted response culturally, dynamically and with all principles as part of our journey of design with all stakeholders. Our aim is to ensure our outcome will benefit the campus for the next 50 to 100 years. This project's success will be a lasting achievement for AUC and indeed Cairo as a whole. 

What’s your vision for the designs?

We're focused on understanding the local culture and environment to ensure we create the right buildings for the people who will use them. People are our top priority. In terms of design, we are studying how to use passive design and Egypt's climate to make our buildings and landscapes more energy-efficient for heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting. We're also looking ahead to a future with zero carbon emissions. It's not a one-size-fits-all approach; we need to consider all these aspects together.

What elements will you incorporate into the designs to preserve the AUC identity?

It's crucial to respect the essence of the AUC campus when working with buildings that have such a unique history and character. Architecturally, we anticipate a consistent and grounded design theme that harmonizes with the campus, emphasizing technology and renewable energy. We aim to link the existing spaces with the new additions seamlessly. Understanding the sourcing and usage of materials is vital. At this early stage, we're developing the framework for these elements and layers to ensure the success of the future campus and indeed its students. 

AUC students won first place worldwide in a competition where 65 international university teams had to develop a sustainable alternative to traditional fats and oils, thereby reducing their carbon emissions and detrimental environmental impact. The AUC team created a unicellular microorganism oil prototype that has a zero carbon footprint.

“I’m so passionate about any research that helps alleviate climate change,” said Yasmin Maghraby ‘03, ‘13, ‘21, adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. “At first, I thought our idea would be impossible to produce, so seeing it become a reality was so satisfying and gratifying.”

Headed by Maghraby, the AUC team was composed of graduate students Lereen Khaled, Dalia Kanna, Saif El Din Mofty and Louai Hariri. The competition was launched by Savola during an innovation session at the World Food Forum event, “We're supporting You(th). Open Innovation in the Private Sector,” held collaboratively with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The competition was designed to promote the transformation of agrifood systems to be more sustainable, innovative and socially responsible. 

"It was an incredible opportunity to make a tangible impact and witness the positive results of our efforts,” said Khaled. “This achievement fueled my determination and passion to keep making a difference as well as bridge theory and practice for innovative, real-world solutions. It  inspired me to continue pushing boundaries for a better world.”

The networking experience also provided a unique opportunity for the student participants. “This life-changing experience enriched my ability to work effectively in a multidisciplinary team and allowed me to engage with experts from Savola, FAO and fellow participants from different countries who share my passion for sustainability, which expanded my professional network and exposed me to different ideas and perspectives,” added Khaled. 

Participants were challenged to develop an alternative to traditional cooking fats and oils, which are not sustainably produced, providing more effective and eco-friendly substitutes that have similar functional properties but use less quantities of water and reduce greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the process.

“The Savola competition was one of the greatest opportunities I had as an AUC graduate student,” said Kanna. “Our goal was to search for green edible oil substitutes prepared using green methods. Teamwork was essential -  we held brainstorming sessions, designed plans, discussed strengths and weaknesses of each proposed idea based on the available literature, assigned roles, conducted experiments, analyzed the results and prepared the final presentation. We also built new friendships and were able to work with experts in the field, enhancing our intellectual and practical skills.” 

Tamer Shoeib, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry, noted, “This shows clearly our commitment to excellence and the caliber of our students who are able to tackle problems of relevance and create highly impactful solutions to unmet, real-world needs. I am incredibly proud of our AUC team.” 

What do geographers, anthropologists, artists, engineers, botanists, pottery experts, photographers, Egyptologists and archaeologists have in common? Every single one has an important place at an excavation. 

“You know, excavations nowadays are no longer just an Egyptologist with a brush. It's a huge, interdisciplinary team,” laughs Marleen De Meyer, the William Kelly Simpson Visiting Professor in Egyptology at AUC.

De Meyer appreciates this aspect of her job: There’s a place for everyone, and the more diverse your team is, the more detailed and fascinating the portrait of ancient civilizations can become. From the various medical conditions they had down to the type of paint used for their coffins, an amazing amount of detail can be deduced from the barest remains. But how exactly do all the pieces come together in the field? The answer is in a lot of expert, detailed teamwork.

Focusing on a site in Middle Egypt called Dayr al-Barsha, De Meyer co-directs an archaeological project that is the first major excavation at this location since 1915. “The necropolis has been in use from the beginning of Egyptian history until the very end. Nearly every period is represented there,” she explains.

The team’s research question is much broader than just documenting individual tombs, but rather engages in a full chronological analysis of the area from beginning to end. “What we want is to understand how this site developed through all this time,” says De Meyer. “We're talking several millennia here, not just centuries.” 

De Meyer’s interest is in funerary culture, and Dayr al-Barsha hosts a rich archive to analyze. “Even a plundered tomb is very interesting to an Egyptologist. I mean, just the smallest piece of a coffin is enough to tell you which type was once present,” she says. “The climate here in Egypt is amazing– everything is preserved, even materials that would decay in other circumstances such as wood, textile, human remains, plant remains, and more. This year I excavated a rare Middle Kingdom embalming deposit in which 4000 year old linen bags of natron were perfectly preserved. These materials were used in the mummification process to desiccate the body.” 

Every surviving detail holds significance to a different expert. Botanists, for example, can determine the type of wood used to make a coffin and through this deduce information on the social class of its occupant. Physical anthropologists can look at the way human bones have healed, and at Dayr al-Barsha they were able to determine that successful amputations were performed to manage conditions like diabetes. Geographers examine where the Nile flowed in the past, artists are essential to draw detailed renderings of artifacts, while engineers help with digital scanning and 3D modeling. 

“I sometimes tell students that the best thing to do if you want to end up working on excavations is not necessarily studying Egyptology specifically but rather whatever interests you. Then you can come into the field with a specialty that Egyptologists don't have,” De Meyer says. “Basically, any discipline can help when it comes to archaeology.”

Aside from uncovering historical artifacts that bring us closer to understanding how ancient societies operated, evidence of the more recent past sometimes surfaces during excavations in Egypt as well. “Because of the excellent preservation, anyone who has ever been present at the site often leaves a record of themselves too, even unintentionally,” De Meyer explains. She found newspaper clippings reporting on World War I, left by American Egyptologist George Reisner in 1915. Between 1891 and 1893, a 17-year-old Howard Carter, who 30 years later would be credited with discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun, left his traces: paint tubes and edges of watercolor paper testifying to his work of copying the decoration of several of the tombs on site. 

Alongside the historical records of communities dating back millennia are the century-old traces of researchers who, in the grand scheme of things, might as well have been there yesterday. It all becomes part of the history of the site.

For more information, see https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/dayr-al-barsha