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Passive Climate Control and the City
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Heat and Dust. A Climate Ethnography of a House in Historic Cairo
AUTHOR: Dalila Ghodbane
CONTEXT: Presentation at the Swiss Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in the Panel “Beyond Engineering – Anthropological Knowledge on Infrastructure”, University of Zürich, November 22, 2019
KEYWORDS: bricolage, material, construction, Cairo
This contribution is based on fieldwork in a house of the medieval area of Cairo through which I analyse the residents’ perception of the indoor climate by documenting the way they shape it, whether intentionally or as a collateral effect of other practices. Because indeed, thermal practices in the heritage built environment of Cairo are material manifestations of thermal knowledge that occasionally contradicts what architects recognise as being the qualities of the building.