3 - The Cairo International Conference Center: Chinese-Exported Architecture in Africa or Afro-Asian Architecture
Thursday, June 12, 2025
11:15 - 13:00 GMT
Location: LAB-02
Presenter(s)
JW
Jin Wang
City University of New York, United States
Presentation Abstract This paper reconsiders the discourse of “Chinese-exported architecture” in Africa and specifically focuses on the Cairo International Conference Center, designed by a team of Chinese architects led by Wei Dunshan and built in 1989. I examine the socio-political contexts of the late 1980s and early 1990s in Egypt and China, introducing how the Center was conceived and realized. Then, I look at publications related to the design and building process as well as contemporary Egyptian reviews, in which a peculiar “Chineseness” was emphasized. This kind of “Chineseness” is also frequently brought up by bourgeoning scholarship on Chinese-built architecture in the Global South, as if wherever and whenever it is built, and however it looks, a building is quintessentially Chinese because it is designed and built by the Chinese. On one hand, this Sino-centric perspective on transnational architecture greatly differs from Western efforts in Africa. The goal of this essay is not to debate whether Chinese transnational architectural practices in Africa are “exploitative” or not, but to foreground the very building, which is usually discussed as a symbol of Afro-China politics. Considering a specific building, this essay contributes to a new understanding of knowledge formation that connects Afro and Asia without consideration of the West as the “center.” By discussing the design plans, formal languages, and the architect’s comments, my question is to what extent the Cairo International Conference Center is actually “Chinese,” “Egyptian,” or “hybrid” – or maybe quintessentially transnational, international, and/or global in a spirit closer to postmodernism?
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