The Building in the Local/Regional Setting

The building makes a very bold counterpoint to the tired and tiresome debate about “Modernity versus Tradition”. In practically every forum dealing with our contemporary reality, someone can always be counted on to frame the issues under discussion in the form of a dichotomous relationship between “Tradition” (usually identified from a Muslim or Pharaonic perspective and presented as harmonious and wonderful) and “Modernity” (usually presented as alienating, dehumanizing, and awful). Someone can also be counted on to immediately reverse the dichotomy, arguing that we cannot live in the past and that modernity (here presented as science, technology, and progress) is the future. This is not only technically and critically flawed (if not outright wrong), but it is also highly unproductive and even counterproductive. The debate is unproductive because it usually leads to endless repetition and the marshalling of ever more examples and highly selective anecdotal evidence to buttress the a priori positions. The debate is also counter-productive because it tends to raise passions and make critical rational discourse even more difficult than it already is.

That this debate is technically flawed derives from the simplistic reductionism implicit in the dichotomous position. As if the rich tapestry representing the historical experience of the Muslim people could be reduced to a single “tradition”
(or traditional position in the debate), or that modernity—a complex, evolving concept that is highly relative and intertwined contemporaneously—could be conveniently circumscribed into a single definable reality that covers all the complex reality of contemporary Egypt, much less anything that could be applicable from Morocco to Indonesia and from China to Africa.

This debate is also critically flawed because it does not use the tools of criticism to expand our understanding of the issues involved. Without such an expanded understanding we are unlikely to progress beyond the repetitious, sterile litanies of this tired and tiresome debate.

Here the Bibliotheca Alexandrina makes a bold and uncompromising statement. It is Architecture as intellectual discourse in the very best sense of the word.

There is no effort at some kitsch rendering of Pharaonic columns or of Islamic arches. No Greek or Roman ornamental motifs find their way into a building that is very much of our time and aimed at the future. It is of our time by the materials and technology it uses.

It is for the future by the boldness and simplicity of its vocabulary, the sophistication of its articulation of the volumes and its management of natural and artificial light.

It is an appropriate response to a futuristic program, and challenges the local milieu to break out of the narrow confines of the prevalent debates and to take on the most intangible, yet most powerful, of all human activities: the unleashing of the mind in the pursuit of knowledge.