Wekelijkse Lezingen

Het NVIC organiseert wekelijks lezingen over diverse onderwerpen.

• mei

De lezingen starten stipt om 18u (de deuren gaan om 17u30 open). Gelieve er rekening mee te houden dat de plaatsen beperkt zijn. De lezingen beginnen zoals gepland en laatkomers worden niet meer binnengelaten. Na de lezingen wordt er een receptie aangeboden in de hal van ons instituut.

mei

• Additional lecture in our series “Museum Mondays”:
  
  Monday 14 May:  HG Merz
  Why exhibition design nowadays?
  
  HG Merz is the chief architect of HG Merz Architectural Office (Museumgestalter), which was established in Stuttgart in 1981 and since 1993 has a second branch in Berlin. While the Stuttgart team focuses on museum and exhibition design, including visual communication, the work of the berlin team centers on the renovation and enhancement of historical buildings. From 1993 to 2007 he was professor of exhibition design at the department of visual communication at the University of Applied Sciences Pforzheim. Since 2008 he has been professor of Architectural design at the Technical University Darmstadt.
  
  Most known projects:  Exhibition Concept and Design of
  • Mercedes Benz  Museum, Stuttgart 1999-2006
  • Porsche Museum, Stuttgart 2005-2009
  • Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen 1994-1996
  • State Library Unter den Linden, Berlin 2000-2012
  The Museum Mondays are organized in cooperation with the Architecture and Urban Design Program of the German University in Cairo – GUC.
  

• 17 May:  Ahmad Hamid 
  The Islamic connection: Designing architecture today
  
  The paper will make a limited choice of projects, all from within my practice of design and architecture; with the sole purpose of explaining how the design process in this case bears a deliberate choice to connect with Islams' vast body of knowledge, both physical and 'maanawi''. The result may bear in cases a direct deduction of this connection; and in others a more complex proof of this relation. Today architecture is at a crossroads, my deliberate choice was not to make it a podium for the celebration of madness. But rather through encompassing a continuously renewed awareness and a discriminating cerebral function in regards to the application of historical knowledge, can one perhaps propose to make it intelligent, humane and still even beautiful once more. In doing so there is always an Islamic connection. Wether on the scale of urban planning or architecture or artifacts; the social, economical, technological amalgam for each project bears an aspiration to be  pleasurably and functionally in favor of the client, the larger community, and the planet at large.
  
  Ahmad Hamid is an Egyptian architect and designer. He is a graduate of Cairo University’s Faculty of Engineering, and has a Master’s Degree from the American University in Cairo’s Islamic Art and Architecture Program. He has over 30 years of international experience encompassing urban, architectural, interior, furniture, and product design.
  Hamid is concerned with issues of sustainability, cultural and socio-economic appropriateness, and intelligence in design. He has taught Architecture and Design at the American University in Cairo, and currently teaches at the Modern Sciences and Arts University. He is the author of the book: ‘Hassan Fathy & Continuity in Islamic Art & Architecture: The Birth of a New Modern’.
  Frequently a jury member of architecture and design competitions, Hamid is also the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. He was awarded a Fulbright Design study grant at Pratt Institute 2005 and most recently, the Frank G. Wisner award in 2007, for scholarly excellence. The Nadia Niazy Mostafa Award in 2010, and the World Architecture Award in March 2010.

• De lezing van 24 mei zal plaatsvinden op dinsdag 29 mei.  Er is geen lezing op 24 mei

• 29 May:  Bernard O’Kane
  The Carved Stone Domes of Cairo
  
  The patterns carved on Cairo’s stone domes are unique for their number and variety. Serious study of these began with Kessler’s monograph of 1976, which photographed all of the examples and analysed the relationships of pattern to stone courses, establishing for the first time a connection between the two. Almost no further work on the topic was done until a workshop was convened at MIT in 2005, spurred by the conservation work and detailed drawings of the Aga Khan restoration projects in the Darb al-Ahmar area. This presented findings related in particular to the statics of the domes and showed how the latest in the series had, unexpectedly, reinforcements of iron clamps.
  However, some basic construction questions about this series remains, including whether the patterns were carved in situ or first on the ground, and the methods of centering used. But other questions have barely been investigated, such as the ways in which the patterns might have been generated to fit the forms of the domes. Previous publications have suggested that “in the layout of the decoration, the number four, following the shape of a square, and its multiples (8, 16, 32, 64) are the basis of the design.” In fact a more careful analysis of dome designs reveals a much greater variety, with examples of five, ten, twelve, twenty, twenty-eight, and forty-sided patterns also known. The only drawing of the pattern of the finest dome of all in the series, that of Qaytbay in the Northern cemetery, for instance, shows it as having a sixteen-sided pattern instead of the ten-sided one it actually has.
  Other irregularities that need be explored and explained include the orientations of the designs, not always on the main axes of the building, and frequently not integrated with the numbering and orientation of the windows and blind niches that normally articulate the drums of these domes.
  The paper will explore the varieties of designs on the domes and their relationship to the other architectural elements, and will examine the implications that these have for the design and construction techniques of this unparalleled ensemble.
  
  Bernard O’Kane is Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo, where he has worked since 1980. Prior to that he was Assistant Director of the British Institute of Persian Studies, Tehran. He has also held visiting professorships at Harvard University and at the University of California, Berkelely. His publications include Timurid Architecture in Khurasan, Studies in Persian Art, Early Persian Paintings: Kalila and Dimna Manuscripts of the Late Fourteenth Century, and The World of Islamic Art; and the edited volumes The Iconography of Islamic Art and Treasures of the Islamic Museums in Cairo.
  

• 31 May:  Lucy Skinner
  Middle Kingdom burials and on-site conservation at the Shunad el Zebeb, Abydos.
  
  Recent excavations by the Pennsylvania, Yale, Institute of Fine Arts team at Abydos have been concentrated around the South wall of the mud brick 2nd Dynasty enclosure of Khasekhemwy.
  During the course of the excavation two undecorated box coffins in the Middle Kingdom style were uncovered.
  Preservation of the two bodies within the decayed coffins was good but unusual. One of the burials turned out to be richly furnished, a young girl with a braided hair wig and her head wrapped in a beaded diadem and many beautiful burial goods laid by her side.
  This talk will present the burials, the grave goods and discoveries and also show the complicated process of conservation and block lifting the whole bodies in one piece from the site.
  
  Lucy Skinner is a freelance archaeological conservator specialising in the conservation and investigation of archaeological and organic artefacts and archaeological site conservation. Lucy is currently working with André Veldmeijer and Salima Ikram at the Egyptian Museum on the Egyptian Museum Chariot Project, an NVIC project. She has recently returned from excavation at Abydos and is now working at Tel el Amarna on coffin conservation.