In this intensive two-week seminar at the Morven Summer Institute, Professor Tessa Farmer and her students explored ideas, practices, and systems that exist to help to build sustainable communities with a central case study of Cairo, Egypt. The course began by examining the relationship between natural and build environments, taking a close look at the city and infrastructural systems as key points of entry, before turning to an exploration of key sustainability challenges and local practices around food, energy, and water and waste.
In the second week, through a hands-on project with guest Professor Brook Muller, the class tackled a research question for community partners in Cairo, Egypt. Megawra/the Built Environment Collective is taking a systems-based approach to greywater reuse in the neighborhood of al-Khalifa to transform overabundant (and damaging) greywater into a resource for innovative strategies for ecological design, urban agriculture, green architecture, local economic development, and social equity planning. Professor Muller worked with the class through a collaborative process to think through a range of possible low-tech, systems-oriented ways of capturing, treating and reusing the water, while considering what would be the most impactful and achievable for members of the community.
Professors Muller and Farmer will be presenting some of these ideas to their community partners in Cairo in July!
Throughout the course, students also upcycled t-shirts into wax wraps and tote bags during their unit on waste, engaged in pot in pot refridgeration during their unit on energy and heat, foraged around Morven in their unit on food, and created DIY plastic bottle water purifiers in their unit on water!
Also, for those of you who are interested in learning more about water practices in Cairo, take a listen to this podcast with Professor Tessa Farmer on her newly released book, Well Connected: Everyday Water Practices in Cairo!
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