Load Bearing Walls

Buildings, the people who make them, and why they stand

Omar El-Sherbiny2 episodes2 min of audio49 playsEpisodic

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S1 · E2Sep 6, 20261:1333 plays Preview

Designing a school for 48 degrees

Omar walks through his own studio's design for a primary school in Upper Egypt where summer hits 48 degrees, with the engineer who argued with him about every window.

S1 · E1Aug 27, 20261:1016 plays Members

The mud brick house that outlived the concrete one

Omar visits a village near Luxor where a mud brick house built in 1952 is cool, dry and standing, while the concrete house next door from 1998 is cracking and unbearable in summer.

About the show

Load Bearing Walls is a fortnightly show about architecture for people who live in buildings rather than design them. Omar El-Sherbiny runs a small practice in Cairo working on housing and schools, and teaches building history, which means he can explain a mud brick vault and a glass tower with the same enthusiasm. Each 40 minute episode takes one building, one material or one problem, such as heat, flooding, or a school that needs to hold 1,200 children, and follows it through the architect, the engineer, the builder and the people who ended up inside. Guests range from a master mason in Luxor to a timber engineer in Vancouver to a woman who has lived in the same Alexandria apartment for 70 years. The show is for curious listeners, students of architecture, and anyone who has stood in a room and wondered why it felt so good or so wrong. Plain language, real site visits, and a lot of looking up.

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