Cairo Design Week 2025 didn’t feel like an event; it felt like a reunion — of disciplines, decades, and generations. From The Egyptian Museum’s marble halls to the shaded courtyards of The GrEEK Campus, the city transformed into an open dialogue between the old and the new.
This year’s edition, held from May 20 to 27, carried the theme “Designing Belonging.” At the opening ceremony in Downtown’s Kodak Passage, hundreds gathered under restored arcades where light poured through brass lattices. Among them was Karim Mekhtigian, founder of Alchemy Design Studio and a pioneer of Egyptian contemporary design. “We’ve designed furniture, interiors, products,” he said, “but what we’re really designing is how Egyptians experience their spaces.”
The exhibitions stretched from Zamalek’s Gyptian Pavilion to Maadi’s K-Spaces, connecting over 150 designers, architects, and artisans. Young collectives like Studio Five and Mostadam Lab showcased projects exploring sustainable urban materials — palm-fiber composites, reused limestone, recycled glass — all tied to Cairo’s layered heritage.
At the Design Dialogue Stage, curated by Mai Galal and Hany Saad, conversations took a personal turn. When asked about Cairo’s future aesthetic, Saad smiled:
“Cairo doesn’t need to copy. It just needs to remember who it is.”
In a small corner of Abdeen Palace, students from the German University in Cairo displayed modular lighting installations inspired by the city’s street vendors. “It’s our way of saying chaos can also be structure,” said student Hana El Sherif, beaming as visitors paused to photograph her work.
Evenings were no less alive. Pop-up showcases filled the AUC Tahrir Campus gardens, where independent brands like Moho Design and Eklego Studio presented new collections. The scent of jasmine mixed with sawdust, and music drifted between exhibition rooms as people debated what “Egyptian design” even means today.
The week closed with a walk through Khedivial Cairo, led by urban researcher Nadine Hamdan, tracing how design once defined citizenship — and how it still could.
“Belonging isn’t nostalgia,” she said to the group gathered near Talaat Harb Square. “It’s what we choose to preserve.”
Cairo Design Week 2025 ended not with applause, but with a collective pause — a moment when a city, always chaotic, finally looked at itself with admiration.
