The Diploma is a year-long interdisciplinary program (Jan–Dec 2026) that offers an integrated exploration of the built environment across multiple disciplines. The program unfolds through four consecutive stages: foundational modules, critical inquiry workshops, elective workshops, and a practicum. Each stage is designed to foster critical thinking, equip participants with theoretical and analytical tools, and strengthen their practical skills to effectively engage with the diverse challenges of on-ground practice.
The 12-month Diploma program is structured across three components:
Who Can Apply:
• Students and practitioners from disciplines related to the built environment such as–but not limited to: design, ecology, architecture, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, and the arts.
• Scholars and early-career faculty and teaching assistants in public and private universities.
• Postgraduate students conducting research or practical work related to the built environment.
Tuition Fees: The 2026 Diploma Program is offered at a fee of EGP 30,000.
Payable in four installments. For more details check the Registration page.
This course examines the city as a central site for understanding contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental transformations. Through cases drawn from diverse urban contexts across the Global South–including Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul, Sao Paulo, and Johannesburg–students examine how urban life is shaped by multiscalar forces and how theory travels, adapts, and transforms across urban sites. The course draws on the methods and approaches of urban sociology, political economy, and geography. Blending theory with collaborative and experiential methods, the course positions the city as both object of study and critical analytical lens.
MoreThis seminar critically examines the ethical and philosophical dimensions of practice in the built environment, moving across multiple scales- systems of power, belief, and identity. It interrogates the power dynamics, ideological frameworks, and cultural tensions that shape ethical decision-making and its implications for spatial design and management.
Addressing different conceptual frameworks and how ethics are derived and adopted individually and collectively, the seminar integrates critical readings, case studies, and participatory exercises-such as role-playing and reflective drawing-to engage participants in confronting real-world ethical dilemmas, analyzing their dimensions, and crafting frameworks for ethical decision-making.
This module explores this year how the arts shape socio-cultural urban life through two lenses: visual arts and performance arts.
MoreWith Africa and the Middle East as its focus, this module examines the history of the conservation and management of built heritage. Starting with a review of theories of architectural conservation, the module critiques policies and methods of heritage management and conservation from pre-modern times to the present, with a focus on heritage as a political construct that is embedded in wider issues such as colonialism, nationalism, globalization, development, sustainability and climate change.
MoreThis module explores urban environments through ecological and systems thinking, viewing cities as ecosystems with significant impacts on surrounding landscapes. It examines urban environmental histories and contemporary challenges like climate change, species extinction, loss of natural system complexity, and resource insecurities. The module also explores systems-based ecological design typologies for urban intervention, focusing on their implications for environmental quality and justice.
MoreThis Online workshop introduces participants to different approaches to the built environment in critical social sciences and humanities. The main objective is to give participants the tools to situate their own understanding of the built environment – shaped by different social and educational backgrounds – with wider parallel understandings in society. The workshop’s approach is based on experiential learning, rather than reading or design work, allowing participants to gain a grasp on basic critical thinking methods through walking, note-taking, photography, film, sound, and geotagging.
MoreThis workshop opens with the question “Where are you?”—not to locate the self, but to unsettle it. It approaches research as a practice of dwelling within uncertainty, where questions are not merely tools, but thresholds. Participants are invited to craft critical inquiries that move across disciplines, and to engage methodologies not as fixed frameworks, but as shifting grounds. Through encounters with religious, academic, and literary texts, alongside artistic and cultural works, the workshop traces how place is not only inhabited, but imagined, narrated, and contested—always in relation to power, memory, and the fragile work of meaning-making.
MoreThis workshop approaches the city as a social and political space, exploring how cities are formed and evolved, and how they are constantly appropriated and redefined by different actors, with a focus on the Egyptian context . The workshop moves across a spectrum from the historic Islamic city, which emerged through complex patterns of social organization and local management, to informal areas developed through incremental building and residents' self-initiatives . It also examines various forms of participatory initiatives, grassroots urban practices, and experiences led by residents, professionals, and civil society organizations. Participants will engage in a critical discussion regarding the possibilities and limits of participation, questioning whether it truly represents a path toward greater spatial, economic, and climate justice, or if it might sometimes serve as a tool for reproducing existing power relations.
MoreThe workshop, "About and Through Homes," aims to collectively explore the diverse meanings of the concept of home in a world where homes have become both commodities and military targets. The workshop includes a conceptual component as well as introductory training in the fundamentals of oral history as a research tool for understanding history from homes.
MoreThis workshop reflects on the question of how to rebuild in a context where violence dismantles the very idea of urban justice.
MoreThis is an in-person workshop spanning four days. Learning outcomes are (a) understanding Geographic Information Systems (GIS) concepts and data formats, as well as general IS concepts such as relational databases and data types; (b) working with GIS software (QGIS) to view, edit, style, and create maps from datasets; (c) understanding and applying GIS analyses on real-world scenarios using QGIS, including spatial joins, buffer analysis, and overlay operations; and (d) collecting geospatial data in the field using mobile phones.
MoreThis workshop approaches the waste management crisis in cities from a different perspective: the problem lies not only in the amount of waste, but also in how cities are designed, services are planned, and our understanding of the environment and development is shaped.
MoreThe practicum is a two-month, hands-on internship placing diploma students in real-world projects led by our founding organizations (Megawra, 10 Tooba, Mansour for Architecture and Conservation). This experience offers in-depth professional exposure to justice-focused urban initiatives.
Participants will be matched to projects based on the alignment of their skills and interests with project needs, allowing them to apply their knowledge to grassroots urban practice alongside experienced professionals.
| Ethics and Philosophy of Practice (Seminar) | 14/01/2026 | 14/02/2026 |
| Arts in the City | 23/03/2026 | 23/05/2026 |
| Urban Lenses: Social, Political, and Economic Perspectives on the City | 25/03/2026 | 20/05/2026 |
| Research Methodologies | 04/04/2026 | 11/04/2026 |
| Critical Thinking Methods in the Built Environment | 09/05/2026 | 27/06/2026 |
| Ecologies of Cities | 01/06/2026 | 01/08/2026 |
| Critical Approaches to Heritage | 01/06/2026 | 01/08/2026 |
| Shared Ground: Participatory Approaches To Production And Upgrading The Built Environment | 11/07/2026 | 25/07/2026 |
| Practicum | 01/09/2026 | 30/11/2026 |