Ramses Wissa Wassef (1911–1974) was an Egyptian architect and professor of art and architecture at the College of Fine Arts in Cairo.[1]
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Ramses Wissa Wassef was born in Cairo. His father was a lawyer, a leader of Egypt's nationalist movement and an art patron who promoted the development of the arts in Egypt. After high school, Wassef wanted to become a sculptor but changed his mind and studied architecture in France at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris. His thesis project "A Potter's House in Old Cairo" received the first prize in 1935. He had a passion for beauty in form and believed "one cannot separate beauty from utility, the form from the material, the work from its function, man from his creative art "[2]
After Wassef's death, his family donated his original architecture drawings to the Rare Books and Special Collections Library at the American University in Cairo.
At the beginning of his career in 1935, Wassef was struck by the beauty of the medieval towns and the old quarters of Cairo. He felt that ancient craftsmen had managed to derive from their traditional heritage an infinite variety of expression and created effects distinguished by local character. He developed an architectural style that bore the stamp of his own strong personality and responded to the challenge of the times without breaking away from the past. Impressed as he was by the beauty of the Nubian houses in the villages around Aswan, which still preserved the domes and vaults, inherited form the earliest Pharaonic dynasties, he resolved to maintain their presence in his own architectural work for reasons of aesthetics, climate and economics. He made use of traditional craftsmen such as stonecutters, traditional carpenters, glass blowers and potters who had inherited the techniques and traditions of the Egyptian vernacular heritage. Wassef taught architecture and art at the Department of Architecture, College of Fine Arts, Cairo, which he also chaired.
Wissa Wassef attempted to prove that art is innate in everyone and can flourish in spite of the deadening influence of mass production [3] He founded the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center in 1951 near the Pyramids to teach young Egyptian villagers how to create art and tapestries. He believed that children are endowed with creative power and potential.[4] The Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983. In 2006, an exhibition was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London to mark the center's 50th anniversary.[5] "Egyptian Landscapes" is a book of photographs that highlights the work of the center.