bright-red outdoor theater restores community use to cairo park amid loss of green spaces

THISS Studio and CLUSTER craft all-red ‘pergola’ theater in cairo

Set against the concrete flow of Cairo’s 6th of October Bridge, Pergola introduces a ten-meter-tall outdoor theater and community arts space built from recycled materials and shaped through a year-long co-design process between THISS Studio, CLUSTER (Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research), and Orient Productions. The structure centers the Anhar: Climate and Culture Platform, a regional initiative funded by the British Council and Art Jameel that supports artistic responses to environmental challenges across the Middle East. Within a rapidly densifying city where public green space is shrinking, Pergola positions culture, ecology, and collective agency at the center of urban life.

The architects deliberately set Pergola in visual counterpoint to the billboards towering over the adjacent bridge. Its vivid red form becomes a signal for public attention in an increasingly privatized landscape, framing a small park in Giza as a site for performance and gathering. The project restores a corner of the city to civic visibility, inviting communities to occupy and define it.

all images by Georges & Samuel Mohsen – The GS Studio

Recycled plastic from the nile becomes walls and flooring

Working with local initiatives VeryNile and Reblox, the London-based team remade waste plastic collected from the Nile and nearby construction sites into floor tiles, shading components, and the striking red walls of the project. The approach demonstrates how recycled matter can anchor a new architectural language for Cairo, one that is expressive yet low-carbon and rooted in the city’s environmental realities. Additional material contributions from TileGreen extend this ethic of reuse across the surfaces of the project.

Pergola’s form and program emerged through an extended co-design process led by CLUSTER and THISS Studio. Local residents, students, and park stakeholders contributed through workshops and model-making sessions, ensuring that the space responds directly to how neighborhood communities gather, perform, and imagine their shared environment. 

Launched as the opening stage for the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF), curated by Orient Productions, Pergola continues to operate as a civic hub for cultural programming and environmental awareness, suggesting how art and architecture can reclaim fragments of the city and redirect them toward more inclusive and sustainable futures.

Pergola introduces a ten-meter-tall outdoor theater and community arts space

set against the concrete flow of Cairo’s 6th of October Bridge

built from recycled materials

the result of a year-long co-design process between THISS Studio, CLUSTER, and Orient Productions

Pergola positions culture, ecology, and collective agency at the center of urban life

the architects deliberately set Pergola in visual counterpoint to the billboards towering over the adjacent bridge

the vivid red form becomes a signal for public attention

the project restores a corner of the city to civic visibility

waste plastic collected from the Nile and nearby construction sites becomes floor tiles and shading components

the striking red walls are also made from recycled materials

pergola’s form and program emerged through an extended co-design process

local residents, students, and park stakeholders contributed through workshops and model-making sessions

the space responds directly to how neighborhood communities imagine their shared environment

inviting communities to occupy and define the structure

project info:

name: Pergola

architect: THISS Studio | @thiss.studio, CLUSTER (Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research) | @clustercairo

location: Cairo, Egypt

collaborators: Orient Productions

photographer: Georges & Samuel Mohsen | @thegsstudio – The GS Studio

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