Ain Shams University students from Cairo will spend 10 days on campus and touring South Carolina as they work with their Clemson counterparts on a proposal for an area at the foot of the Giza plateau, home to the Great Pyramids of Giza.

The ongoing partnership reaches a significant milestone this summer when Clemson and Ain Shams professors present their plans to the governor of Giza, who has the authority to implement the ideas.

The transcontinental collaboration started in 2006 when students from the two schools teamed up to provide design solutions to challenges in Luxor, Egypt, where the Avenue of the Sphinxes along the Nile River has experienced centuries of unplanned urban growth. Their proposal for Luxor is currently in the hands of Ahmed Nazif, prime minister of Egypt.

Much like the challenge in Luxor, the students' current project is to find solutions to a rapidly changing urban fabric, this time in an area in the very shadow of the world's most famous pyramids.

According to Clemson landscape architecture professors Hala Nassar and Rob Hewitt, the pyramids of Giza are on top of one plateau, and the future site of the New Grand Egyptian Museum is on another nearby plateau. Between them and to the east a sprawling and unplanned fabric has developed over the past 50 years.

According to Nassar, who used her academic contacts in Egypt to establish the collaboration, the students and their faculty leaders are seeking practical solutions to the unplanned sprawl, but solutions that will remain sensitive to the cultural and economic needs of the residents.

"This is an amazing opportunity for the students of these two universities, a chance to have an impact on an ancient site," Nassar said. "They're working and studying in a place where they leave their footprints on thousands of years of civilization."

This is the second trip to Clemson for the Ain Shams architecture students. The landscape architecture students of Clemson University have made three site visits to Egypt--in February 2007, July 2007 and February 2008--where they visited Luxor, Giza and Cairo.

For more information about Clemson's graduate program in landscape architecture, please visit: www.grad.clemson.edu/programs/LandArch/index.php.

If Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif approves the plan put together by Clemson and Ain Shams University students and faculty, he could push through the funding required for implementation.

Hala Nassar and Robert Hewitt joined their counterparts from Ain Shams to present the architecture and landscape architecture plans.

The two universities have collaborated since 2006 on a master plan that would restore and rejuvenate two temples and the Avenue of the Sphinxes in the city of Luxor, including a waterfront area on the Nile River.

The ancient temples of Luxor and Karnak are connected by an avenue lined with ram-headed sphinxes. Much of the ancient site has fallen to ruin or been overrun by centuries of encroachment. Much of the two-mile avenue is covered in layers of unplanned and haphazard sprawl.

The idea for the universities to collaborate emerged when Nassar returned to Egypt to visit family and colleagues. She discovered that Ain Shams has a great architecture program, but no landscape architecture tradition, which is one of Clemson's strength disciplines. The master plan presented to Prime Minister Nazif included architecture and landscape architecture elements.

Clemson students first visited the site in Luxor in 2007, when they and their Ain Shams counterparts documented current conditions. Their challenge was to find a solution to preserving the ancient area while remaining sensitive to the needs of modern inhabitants.

For more information about Clemson's graduate program in landscape architecture, visit: www.grad.clemson.edu/programs/LandArch/index.php.

As part of an ambitious push to restore and rejuvenate the two temple complexes, as well as the Avenue of Sphinxes and the surrounding city of Luxor, government officials in 2006 invited American students from Clemson University to join Egyptian students from Ain Shams University in Cairo to collaborate on a master plan for the city of Luxor.

During the spring 2007 semester, the first steps of this project were taken by Clemson students as those enrolled in the landscape architecture urban design studio began work with students at Ain Shams in parallel studio courses. The Clemson students visited Egypt in February 2007 to see Luxor first-hand and engaged in an urban analysis of the city. They also met their collaborators at Ain Shams University. Upon their return, students in the studio course worked to provide a variety of urban design solutions for key areas of the city. In particular, these students worked on landscape designs that complement the architectural plans of the Ain Shams studio; their work primarily addressed the temple and avenue areas but also included landscape development plans for the west bank of the Nile, including the Valley of the Dead.

For the full-text article in Clemson World, visit www.clemson.edu/clemson-world/2008/winter/article5.html.

For more information about Clemson's graduate programs in these fields, visit the appropriate websites below:
*City and Regional Planning - www.grad.clemson.edu/programs/CRP/index.php
*Environmental Design and Planning - www.grad.clemson.edu/programs/EDP/index.php
*Landscape Architecture - www.grad.clemson.edu/programs/LandArch/index.php

Clemson University was awarded a $160,000 Campus Heritage grant from the Getty Foundation to develop a heritage preservation plan for the campus.

The grant will support a project to maintain Clemson's historic architectural, landscape and spatial assets, and to educate and train the people of Clemson University in the best ways to protect and maintain them.

Goals of the project include developing a comprehensive inventory of campus historic resources, The Class of '39 Bell Monument is in the Carillon Garden.producing a National Register eligibility assessment, and creating a campus stewardship strategy that involves the campus and community.

John Milner Associates of Charlottesville, Va., has been hired to develop the preservation master plan.

"One of the primary goals of this project is to provide a variety of education options to students interested in historic preservation and related fields such as architecture, landscape architecture, history, geography, archaeology and engineering," says Cari Goetcheus, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at Clemson. Goetcheus shares project supervisor duties with Dan Nadenicek, chairman of Clemson's department of landscape architecture.

"Students will have the opportunity to participate in hands-on research, field work, research projects and independent studies allowing them to learn about preservation planning, techniques, approaches and interpretation," Goetcheus said.

Since 2002, through its Campus Heritage Initiative, the Getty Foundation has awarded grants to 86 colleges and universities for preservation planning, as well as funding surveys of hundreds of small liberal arts colleges. These grants have played a catalytic role in helping institutions of higher education understand the significance of the historic resources on their campuses and plan for their long-term preservation. The current round of grants represents the final year of the initiative.

"American colleges and universities are frequently unique repositories of some of the country's finest historic architecture and designed landscapes," says Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation. "While other buildings may have had a variety of owners and uses over the years, campus buildings have for the most part remained under the same stewardship, which presents wonderful opportunities for preservation and education."

For more information about Clemson's graduate program in landscape architecture, visit http://www.grad.clemson.edu/programs/LandArch/. For more information about the graduate program in historic preservation, visit http://www.grad.clemson.edu/programs/HistPres/. For more information about the graduate program in architecture, visit http://www.grad.clemson.edu/programs/Arch/.

Researchers from Clemson University and the College of Charleston will survey and evaluate resources associated with the famed sweetgrass baskets of South Carolina's Lowcountry.

A $34,000 grant from the National Park Service, managed by the South Carolina

Luxor, also known in the past as the ancient city of Thebes, is situated on the east bank of the Nile River. It is home to both the Luxor and Karnak temples and a ceremonial avenue of sphinxes. In ancient times, this avenue joined the two temples into one grand religious center that commonly held processions and other religious events. The city looks much different today, as Dr. Nassar explains, "Today, with the pressures of urban growth [in] Luxor and of inhabitants' preference to live as close as possible to the temples (the source of their livelihood), the urban fabric has infringed on the sites of the Karnak and Luxor temples as well as the avenue of the sphinxes." The avenue is covered by residential neighborhoods, and it is the goal of this project to relocate these residents and restore the temples and avenue areas.

During the spring 2007 semester, the first steps of this project were taken by Clemson students as those enrolled in the landscape architecture urban design studio began work with students at Ain Shams in parallel studio courses. The Clemson students visited Egypt in February to see Luxor first-hand and engaged in an urban analysis of the city. They also met their collaborators at Ain Shams University. Upon their return, students in the studio course worked to provide a variety of urban design solutions for key areas of the city. In particular, these students worked on landscape designs that complement the architectural plans of the Ain Shams studio; their work primarily addressed the temple and avenue areas but also included landscape development plans for the west bank of the Nile, including the Valley of the Dead.

This project is not only a terrific international, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural educational opportunity for students in the department of planning and landscape architecture, but future collaboration, presentations and scholarly publications will help to increase the national recognition of the department and Clemson University as well.

If you would like additional information about this project, contact Dr. Nassar at hnassar@clemson.edu.