Call for Papers | Layers of Civilization
AIA Middle East 2026 Year-End Conference
AIA Middle East + AIA International
Cairo, Egypt | 11–14 November 2026
AIA Middle East and AIA International are pleased to invite architects, urbanists, academics, researchers, preservationists, planners, designers, students, and allied professionals to submit proposals for Layers of Civilization, the Cairo 2026 Year-End Conference.
This year's conference is built around Cairo itself as both setting and intellectual framework. Rather than treating the city simply as a backdrop, Layers of Civilization is conceived as a four-day hybrid professional and cultural experience combining presentations at AUC Tahrir Square with curated visits across Cairo's historic and contemporary urban landscapes.
Cairo is one of the world's great layered cities, where successive civilizations, faiths, empires, and modern interventions remain visible in the built environment. From Pharaonic Cairo to Roman and Byzantine Fustat, from Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman Cairo to Khedival, modern, and contemporary Cairo, the city offers an extraordinary lens through which to examine architecture as cultural record, civic framework, and future-making practice.
While Cairo serves as the primary point of departure, we welcome submissions that engage comparable questions across the Middle East and beyond. We are especially interested in work that explores layered histories, living heritage, urban transformation, preservation, adaptive reuse, cultural memory, contemporary practice in historic contexts, and the ways architecture mediates continuity and change.
Submissions may take the form of:
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Paper presentations
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Panel proposals
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Case study presentations
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Lightning talks
Topics may include cities as palimpsests, monumentality and memory, historic urbanism, preservation and conservation, interfaith heritage, architecture and archaeology, metropolitan expansion, water and infrastructure, contemporary practice in historic settings, and regional or global parallels.
Important Dates
Call for Papers Opens: Monday, June 8, 2026
Submission Deadline: Friday, July 3, 2026
Notification of Acceptance: Friday, July 24, 2026
Final Presentation Materials Due: Monday, October 12, 2026
Conference Dates: November 11–14, 2026
Please submit proposals to: layersofcivilization@aiamiddleeast.org
Subject line: Layers of Civilization – Call for Papers Submission
We welcome rigorous, thoughtful, practice-based, research-driven, and forward-looking contributions. Whether through scholarship, design work, conservation practice, pedagogy, or urban engagement, Layers of Civilization seeks to illuminate how architecture operates across time - as record, framework, catalyst, and memory.
We look forward to receiving your submissions and to continuing this important global conversation in Cairo.
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Li Ren, AIA
2025 President | AIA Middle East
2024 Chair | AIA Global Practice Committee
Associate | Perkins Eastman Dubai
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