Space, Color and Quality of Life in a Nubian Environment

The Egyptian Nubians relocated after the construction of the High Dam South of Aswan to a completely different setting, adjusted with difficulty to their new environment and changed part of it to suit their needs. This paper is a longitudinal study; it deals with the issue of continuity in the patterns of lifestyle within the present Egyptian Nubian community. The aim is to seek evidence on such continuity and to explain the repercussions of previous socio-economic values on the actual residential built and lived-in environment. The methodology is based on earlier studies that were done before relocation and immediately after, also on site visits made by the authors to detect the current aspects of the built-environment. The field study focuses on changes made to the interior and exterior spaces, on the use of decorative patterns and color of the walls and on the residents’ lifestyle. The tools for data gathering are annotated photographs and semi-structured interviews. The cases are chosen from a random sample in one of the 33 villages that constitute the Kom-Ombo site – the village of Eneba (Aniba). Results show evidence of change in all investigated aspects with a slight continuity in some of the culturally related values.

Kamel, Diana and Abdel-Hadi, Aleya. "Space, Color and Quality of Life in a Nubian Environment ," in ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 6, issue 1 (2012).

Diana Kamel and Aleya Abdel-Hadi