The 1940s Stoppelaëre House opened Last Week on Luxor’s west
bank. Written
By/ Nevine El-Aref.
After 12 months of restoration, Stoppelaëre House opened with a
view to developing it into a cultural and scientific centre for heritage.
Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany and Swiss Ambassador Markus
Leitner opened the house Friday. The house is a fully restored masterpiece
of 20th century architecture by Egypt's pioneer architect Hassan Fathy.
The
restoration was part of the Theban Necropolis Preservation Initiative launched
in 2008 by the Ministry of Antiquities in collaboration with the University of
Basel and the Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation.
Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Department, said
that Stoppelaëre House is an example of Fathy's mature approach to mud brick
architecture. It was built in 1950 for Alexander Stoppelaëre after the
completion of the village of New Gourna, a visionary housing project of the
late 1940s.
The restoration was funded by Factum Foundation for Digital
Technology in Conservation, Madrid, and the work was carried out by the Waly
Centre for Architecture and Heritagein Cairo with a team of local craftsmen.
Tarek Waly, one of the leading heritage architects working in Egypt,
worked with Fathy for many years and has a deep understanding of his aims and
intentions. Great attention has been paid to preserving the building while also
making it serve a new function as a state of the art 3D scanning, archiving and
training centre.
Adam Lowe, founder of Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in
Conservation, explained that the new centre at Stoppelaëre House will bring 3D
scanning technologies (including medium/long range survey scanning, close range
high-resolution surface scanning, composite photography and high-resolution photogrammetry)
to Luxor. High-resolution recording and documentation provides a cost effective
solution for heritage documentation that will benefit the local community.
He pointed out that in 2016, Factum Foundation began training local
operators under the supervision of Aliaa Ismail, a specialist in architecture
and Egyptology, who will run the centre. “The first two local operators are
already fully trained and as the centre becomes fully equipped, the number of
people receiving training in data recording, processing and archiving will
increase,” Lowe said.
He added that the restoration of Stoppelaëre House and the Theban
Necropolis Preservation Initiative Training Centre are one of the central
elements of the Theban Necropolis Preservation Initiative (TNPI), a project
initiated in 2008. The TNPI gained prominence in 2014 for installing an exact
facsimile of the tomb of Tutankhamun on the site near Howard Carter´s house.
Lowe continued that high-resolution recording and documentation are
transforming the ways in which we protect, monitor, study and communicate the
importance of vulnerable cultural heritage sites like the Valley of the Kings.
Now the initiative is focused on the tomb of King Seti I. Upon the
discovery of the tomb 200 years ago by the explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni,
a facsimile was made of the tomb’s wall to put them on show in London.
Regretfully, Belzoni’s facsimile was made by casting the walls, which caused
significant damage to the tomb. Belzoni and others also removed sections of the
tomb that are now in international museums and collections around the world.
Stoppelaëre House become the symbol of a new approach, whereby such
scattered fragments are analysed and reintegrated into a whole by way of new
technologies. During 2017 there will be a significant transfer of skills and
technology in order to facilitate the recording of sites in and around Luxor.
Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at the American University in
Cairo, describes the training programme as a fantastic idea. “It will provide
Egyptians with the most up-to-date technologies that will allow them to
preserve and document their cultural heritage accurately and completely. This
shows how international cooperation can further the preservation of heritage,
not just for Egypt, but for the world," she said.
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