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At the same time, the students of the first intake arrived in Egypt and were involved in the preparatory weeks activities to orient and familiarize them in the contextual settings of Cairo and Ain Shams University. Once more the concept of urban safaris was applied with three urban safaris organized to Downtown Cairo, Fatimid Cairo and Alexandria. The activities were complemented by two “one day crash courses” provided by the DAAD Cairo Academy to enhance some of the academic as well as cultural skills of the students. Furthermore, an excursion to Siwa Oasis was organized to understand the logic and value of self-built/self-organised communities. The field study focused on the themes of architecture, urban planning and landscape. IUSD kept the tradition of organizing yearly international symposiums which was held in September 2012 in Cairo, entitled “Integrated Urbanism Dialogues II: On resilience”. The symposium was organized by and hosted at Ain Shams University. Lasting for two days and with the contributions of several Egyptian, MENA and International speakers, the symposium tried to explore the different issues and domains related to resilience with experiences brought from all over the world. In summer 2012, the IUSD team secured funding for the second phase of the programme by developing a concept that outlines several activities leading to the longterm sustainability. One of the main building blocks is the establishment of new entities for research, consultancy and further activities at both universities. These entities, called IUSD-Labs, are envisaged to embed the MSc IUSD in a broader context that will eventually support the course academically as well as financially. We are proud to be able to present the first activities of the IUSD-labs in Stuttgart and Cairo, which are presented in Part 3 of the yearbook. The spring school on neovernacular architecture in Siwa, which was jointly organized by both IUSD-labs, represents a first successful activity. At IUSD-Lab Cairo, two new research projects were launched: One of them is to “Design and Build” a sustainable house, using local materials in remote areas
of Egypt, funded by the Egyptian Academy for Scientific Research and Technology. Another research project is funded by the Science and Technology Research Fund (STDF) focusing on “Development Priorities in Informal Areas: Planning, Realization and Local Perceptions” (in cooperation with TU Berlin). The establishment of the IUSD programme continues to take place in the context of the dramatic political transformation process in the MENA region which continues to present many challenges but also, more importantly, continues to fuel the enthusiasm of all those involved. The ongoing transformation process also affirms and validates our overarching aim of training a new generation of experts and decision-makers (practitioners, academics, civil servants) from a variety of backgrounds to face the tremendous environmental, technological and social challenges of rapid urbanization in the MENA region. It also offers the chance to our graduates to contribute to this transformation process by pursuing new career possibilities within more democratic and open societies. Last but not least, the IUSD team at both universities wants to thank all our IUSD students for their dedication and enthusiasm! We would also like to thank our universities and all our colleagues who contributed to the teaching and worked tirelessly to make IUSD a success. In particular we want to thank the DAAD staff in Bonn and Cairo whose active support made the establishment of IUSD possible. We are looking forward to the next years! ●