Returning One Year Later
In May 2024, Georges & Samuel returned to La Maison d’Égypte in Paris, joining architect Waleed Arafa for a week-long post-occupancy evaluation. Nearly a year after the building first opened its doors to students, the visit offered a rare chance to quietly observe how architecture begins to take on new life when inhabited—how a place imagined on paper slowly becomes part of people’s everyday experience.
The Role of Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) in Dar Arafa’s Practice
A post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is a practice in architecture that goes beyond design and construction. It asks: how does a building actually work once people live, study, and move through it? For Waleed Arafa and Dar Arafa Architecture, this step is very important—indeed central—to their process. They see it as an ethical responsibility: to return, to listen, and to understand how architecture truly serves those who inhabit it. At La Maison d’Égypte, the process was not about assessing faults or ticking boxes, but about attentive observation, discovering how design decisions resonate in lived experience, and how architecture becomes a partner in shaping everyday rhythms of daily life.
Building & Design Context: Vision, Materiality, Identity
To understand the post-occupancy reflections, it helps to know more about what the building is, how it was conceived, and what design goals informed it.
- Historical & Institutional Context La Maison d’Égypte is a new Egyptian student residence located in the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP), a campus meant to bring together students from many nations in a verdant, modernist landscape. The building marks Egypt’s return to CIUP after earlier designs from the mid-20th century failed to materialize. A design competition was held when in 2018, 1,915 m² of land was made available to Egypt’s Ministry of Higher Education.
- Collaboration & Architects The project was realized through collaboration between Dar Arafa (Egypt) led by Waleed Arafa, and SAM Architecture (France) under Boris Schneider. The brief called for capturing the identity of Egyptian architecture while respecting the local context of CIUP.
- Material & Form A key material choice was precast concrete, treated as “processed stone.” The concrete is pigmented and acid-etched to mimic the texture and hue of Egyptian sandstone. Rather than being mere cladding, it is structural—intended to carry both aesthetic and functional weight. The surface is also treated to have self-cleaning properties, responding to the climate and urban conditions.
- Spatial Organization The building has a U-shaped plan wrapped around a protected 100-year-old copper beech tree. A central glazed atrium—with Egyptian plants—runs the full height of the building. Student rooms are accessed via single-loaded corridors that face the atrium. Communal kitchens and dining areas are located on each floor overlooking the garden interior. This layout ensures every room, corridor, and communal space benefits from natural light.
- Cultural Symbolism The façade is adorned with engraved hieroglyphic panels carrying texts from ancient Egyptian writings on knowledge and learning—selected by Arafa in conversation with Egyptologists (e.g. Dr. Monica Hanna, Prof. Salima Ikram, Dr. Anne-Claire Salmas). There is also a detailed scene (“Teaching Young Girls to Become Scribes”) featured at the main door. Visitors will have access to translations via QR code in Arabic, French, and English.
- Interior & Amenities The residence offers 177 standard rooms (~15 sqm), a number of accessible and studios, plus several suites (~33 sqm) with full kitchenettes. Each room has a large soundproof window with views over Paris or the CIUP. There are fully-equipped communal kitchens each floor, a 200-seat multipurpose hall (acoustic wooden paneling with forms referencing lotus & papyrus), and a roof deck/solarium with expansive views.
Residents’ Voices and the Architect’s Return
During the May 2024 POE, Mr. Arafa spent time with residents, students from Egypt and other countries—inviting them to share their experiences. Many praised the impact of the abundant light (thanks to the single-loaded corridors and glazed facades), the sense of openness provided by the atrium and internal garden, and the comfort and privacy of their rooms. Some spoke of surprise at how communal kitchens became more than cooking spaces—they are places for connection and rituals of daily life. These reflections confirmed many of the design priorities but also surfaced small adjustments: for example, how light behaves at different hours; how rooms’ acoustics are experienced when multiple spaces are in use; or how shared spaces are used in informal, unexpected ways.
Observing Atmosphere, Light, and Context
Georges & Samuel documented La Maison d’Égypte under varying light and seasonal conditions—morning sun in the garden, midday reflections on facades, dusk mood inside corridors, night glow from interior lighting. This range allowed them to see how design intentions (light, warmth, material textures) play out in reality. It also offered moments to see how the building dialogues with its surroundings — how passersby respond to hieroglyphic facades, how the building sits among CIUP’s iconic modernist structures, such as Fondation Suisse and Maison de Brésil. The exchanges of visual light and shadow, of architecture and nature, of building volume and campus space, all become parts of residents’ lived experience.
Shared Kitchens, Shared Life
The communal kitchens located on each floor have become central meeting points within the residence. Overlooking both the atrium and the internal and external gardens, they offer spaces where students prepare meals, share dinners, or simply pause for conversation. Beyond cooking, the kitchens host moments of study, movie nights, and informal gatherings—everyday rituals that transform architectural intention into lived community. In their openness and vantage points, the kitchens weave together the building’s spatial qualities with the social rhythms of residence life, reinforcing the balance between individuality and shared belonging.
The Garden as Atmosphere
Equally important, At the center of the building, the internal garden and the preserved copper beech tree are not just aesthetic features but living anchors. At different times, students use them for reading, resting, gathering. The garden’s presence filters light, softens the interior environment, and offers a visual respite from built surfaces. Its effect is more atmospherically felt than loudly visible—quietly shaping moods, centering communal life, offering pause.
Everyday Gestures
The post-occupancy images focus on quiet everyday actions: a student preparing a meal in one of the communal kitchens; shared dinners unfolding; sunlight tracing corridor walls; small conversations across thresholds. These moments show how architecture becomes a stage for life, and also how small design elements—windows, layout, materiality—affect those daily rhythms: brightness, comfort, privacy, communal interaction.
From Design to Daily Life
The post-occupancy visit showed how many of the building’s intentions—abundant natural light, warmth of communal spaces, and the balance between privacy and sociability—are now firmly embedded in residents’ daily lives. The evaluation also highlighted how material textures, light conditions, and shared areas continue to shape comfort and interaction over time, underscoring that architecture does not end with construction but evolves through inhabitation, where design becomes part of the lived rhythms of community.
Continuing the Conversation
Set within the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, La Maison d’Égypte also participates in a larger architectural dialogue with its neighbors—iconic works such as Le Corbusier’s Maison Suisse, Claude Parent’s Maison de l’Inde, and the historic Maison Internationale. Within this context, the residence affirms its own identity while contributing to the continuity of a campus conceived as a living museum of international architecture. The post-occupancy study reaffirmed that architecture’s true measure lies not only in its design but in its capacity to adapt, to host, and to foster belonging. Documenting this stage of the building’s life reveals how it now stands not only as an architectural work but as an active participant in the everyday exchanges of students, passerby, and the city itself.