New AUC Campus

History

Current Campus
AUC was incorporated on July 11, 1919 in Washington, DC, United States. Since then, AUC has evolved into one of the region's leading universities and its academic enrollment has grown to 5000 students (Fall 2005).

AUC currently occupies 96,000 square meters of space on 7.3 acres in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. Its campus is incontiguous, covering parts of five city blocks, consisting of the Main Campus, the Greek Campus, and the Special Collections and Rare Books Library. Two AUC buildings, located outside of the downtown “core” campus include a twelve-story residence hall in Zamalek and a building for continuing education in Heliopolis.

Expansion of academic programs, a growing student body and a lack of physical resources to sustain these growths prompted the AUC Board of Trustees to approve the relocation of the university.

New Cairo Land Purchase
In 1997, the American University in Cairo (AUC) purchased a 260-acre plot of land in New Cairo, approximately 35 kilometers east of its current campus, as the site for its new campus. AUC will build a new comprehensive and cohesive campus on this new site to replace the existing one in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo.

Architectural Competition
Firms from Egypt, Europe, and the United States submitted pre-qualifications to be considered for the planning-design of the new campus competition.

A rigorous selection process, examining each firm's capabilities, previous experiences in similar projects, and quality of their previous planning and design work, resulted in a short list of 25. These 25 firms were asked to respond to a Request for Proposals, resulting in a second short list of 10 firms. Each of these 10 firms was rated independently by a panel of five persons. As a result, six firms were invited to participate in the competition. These firms, in alphabetical order, were:

Boston Design Collaborative (BDC) / Carol R. Johnson Associates (CRJA)
Cannon
Ellerbe Becket
The Hillier Group
RTKL Associates, Inc.
Sasaki Associates, Inc./Community Design Collaborative (CDC)

Prominent architects, AUC administrators and AUC trustees served as jury members.

On September 16, 1999, AUC announced that the architectural firm of Boston Design Collaborative (BDC) in partnership with the landscape firm of Carol R. Johnson Associates (CRJA) had been selected to develop the master plan for the New Campus Project.

Nine decades ago, AUC’s founders chose to locate their new university in the heart of a great Arab metropolis, and the institution grew into the surrounding city.