Cairo's Gated Communities: Dream Homes or Unified Houses

With the expansion of Cairo and the rise of gated communities in the desert plateaus, the luxury of beholding ones’ own custom home instead of a prototype house became a goal. The aim here is to discuss the architectural significance of a large sector of compounds. The main hypothesis is the creation of a new ‘International Style’ of unified models in each compound, not taking into consideration different users needs and individual differences, leading to many problems, either technical or aesthetical. The methodology adopted in the paper is based upon first the literature review of the emergence of Gated Communities in Cairo. Following that the analysis discusses the possibility of improving the quality of this new trend of housing by making a qualitative cross-analysis between custom made homes and pre-designed models.