American University in Cairo Law Department - AUC Campus History

AUC Campus History

AUC was originally established in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. The 7.8-acre Tahrir Square campus was developed around the Khairy Pasha Palace. Built in the neo-Mamluk style, the palace inspired an architectural style that has been replicated throughout Cairo. Ewart Hall was established in 1928, named for William Dana Ewart, the father of an American visitor to the campus, who made a gift of $100,000 towards the cost of construction on the condition that she remain anonymous. The structure was designed by A. St. John Diament, abutting the southside of the Palace. The central portion of the building houses an auditorium large enough to seat 1,200, with classrooms, offices and exhibition galleries. The school’s continued growth required additional space, and in 1932, a new building was dedicated to house the School of Oriental Studies. East of Ewart Hall, the centerpiece of the new building is Oriental Hall, an auditorium and reception room built and decorated in an adaptation of traditional styles, yet responsive to the architectural style of their own time.

In the fall of 2008, AUC officially inaugurated AUC New Cairo, a new 260-acre suburban campus in New Cairo, a satellite city 45 minutes away from the downtown campus. New Cairo is a development comprising 46,000 acres of land and with a projected population of 2.5 million people. AUC New Cairo provides advanced facilities for research and learning, as well as all the modern resources to support campus life. In its master plan for the new campus, the university mandated that the campus express the university’s values as a liberal arts institution in what is essentially a non-Western context with deep traditional roots and high aspirations. The university is intended to serve as a case study for how architectural harmony and diversity can coexist creatively and how tradition and modernity can appeal to the senses. Additionally, campus spaces serve as virtual laboratories for the study of desert development, biological sciences and the symbiotic relationship between environment and community.

Most university administrative offices are housed in the Administration Building. This includes the offices of the President, Provost and senior administration offices.

The Abdul Latif Jameel Hall is home to the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research. Facilities include executive training rooms, computer labs, fully equipped video editing and production labs, and specialized labs for graphics, multimedia, radio broadcasting and newspaper production. Abdul Latif Jameel Hall also houses the Heikal Department of Management, the Mohamed Shafik Gabr Economics Department, the Office of Graduate Students Services and the Sony Gallery.

The home of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Hall, features labs for psychology and Egyptology and computer-assisted language labs. The AUC Center for the Arts houses an art gallery; 300-seat theater; labs for electronic music and photography; studios for drawing, painting, sculpture and theater design; and studios for music and film editing and production. The School of Sciences and Engineering features spacious, sophisticated labs in every major scientific discipline and a range of specialized fields, from microbiology to systematics, from microprocessors to polymers, from energy systems to soils. Other highlights include an animal facility, greenhouse, herbarium and structural testing facility.

Within the Research Centers Building is the AUC Forum, the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Center for American Studies, the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement and the Yousef Hameel Science and Technology Research Center.

The Dr. Hamza AlKholi Information Center houses AUC’s offices for enrollment, admissions, student financial affairs, and student services. The Howard Theatre is located at the Hatem and Hanet Mostafa Core Academic Center, along with the Mansour Group Lecture Hall and curriculum offices.

There are two theaters within the AUC Center for the Arts, including the Malak Gabr Arts Theater and the Gerhart Theater, as well as the Sharjah Art Gallery and offices for the Department of Performing and Visual Arts.

The university’s Campus Center provides students with a communal area to eat, congregate, organize trips and attend campus-wide events. Inside the building are a bookstore, gift shop, bank, travel office and the main dining room. There is also a daycare center, a faculty lounge and offices for student offices, the travel office and the AUC Press Campus shop. Near the Campus Center is the student-housing complex. Across from the student residences is the three-story indoor athletic complex, including a 2,000-seat multipurpose court, a jogging track, six squash courts, martial arts and exercise studios, a free weight studio and training courts. Outdoor facilities include a 2,000-seat track and field stadium, swimming pool, soccer field, jogging and cycling track, and courts for tennis, basketball, handball and volleyball.

Housing one of the largest English-language collections in the region, AUC’s five-story library includes space for 600,000 volumes in the main library and 100,000 volumes in the Rare Books and Special Collections Library; locked carrels; computer workstations; video and audio production and editing labs; and comprehensive resources for digitizing, microfilming and preserving documents. In addition, on the plaza level of the library, the Learning Commons emphasizes group and collaborative learning. This unique area integrates independent study, interactive learning, multimedia and technology rooms, and copy and writing centers.

The campus also features the Conference and Visitor Center where the 1,400-seat Bassily Auditorium is located, along with the 200-seat Moataz Al Alfi Hall, and smaller lecture halls and meeting rooms.

AUC New Cairo was built using 24,000 tons of reinforcing steel, as well as 115,000 square meters of stone, marble, granite cladding and flooring. More than 7,000 workers worked two shifts on the construction site.

Sandstone for the walls of campus buildings is all from a single quarry in Kom Ombo, 50 kilometers north of Aswan. The stone arrived by truck in giant multi-ton blocks, which were cut and shaped for walls, arches and other uses at a stone-cutting plant built on the site. The walls were constructed according to energy management systems which reduce campus air conditioning and heating energy use by at least 50 percent as compared to conventional construction methods. More than 75 percent of the stone in the Alumni Wall that circles the campus was recycled from stone that would otherwise have been discarded as waste after cutting.

A 1.6-kilometer service tunnel that runs beneath the central avenue along the spine of AUC’s campus is a key element to making its overall pedestrian nature possible. Services accessible via the tunnel include all deliveries and pickups from campus buildings, fiber optic and technology-related wiring, major electrical conduits and plumbing for hot water, domestic water and chilled water for air conditioning. All other pipes for sewage, natural gas, irrigation and fire fighting are buried on the campus, outside the tunnel, around buildings as needed for their purposes.

All of the trees, shrubs and plants—with the exception of the date palms—were propagated and grown at AUC’s Desert Development Center. Many of the trees shade the campus’s 2,000-plus parking places. The total number of date palms is 1,216 and there are a total number of 6,970 trees. In addition, there are 27 fountains, pools and water features.

The Urban Land Institute recognized AUC’s new campus design and construction with a special award recognizing its energy efficiency, its architecture, its capacity for community development. The campus is host to more than 30 undergraduate programs and 15 graduate programs. It offers six schools, including the newly inaugurated Graduate School of Education, the School of Business, and the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and ten research centers.

Margaret Scobey, US Ambassador to Egypt, was among the guests at the inauguration in February 2009. In her remarks, Scobey said, “The new demands of our new world raise the importance of education. We need our future leaders to be diverse and to have a diverse educational experience…Perhaps most importantly, we need leaders who are dedicated to developing a true respect for each other if we are going to effectively work together to harness these forces of change for the greater good.” Ambassador Scobey also delivered a message of congratulations to AUC from US President Barack Obama.

The downtown campus at Tahrir Square is currently being transformed into a cultural center. It includes a new branch of the AUC Bookstore, a café and the Margo Veillon Gallery for Contemporary Egyptian Art.