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The purpose of this paper is to explore the “event” of the construction of Naguib Mahfouz Square. Drawing on the memory of Gamaet-Aldowel-AlArabyia Street, it attempts to uncover the socio-cultural structures inherited in the Egyptian urban street.

This study adopts Foucauldian discourse on institutions of “knowledge and authority” to approach the power relations between the actors involved. This discourse was constructed through in-depth, unstructured interviews with architects and involved government personnel as well as other archival resources that included national newspapers and magazines.

This discourse reflected an institutional controversy between these actors over the perception and design of the Egyptian street, highlighting the alienation of the designer, and the user/lay-people, from the urban institution. Naguib Mahfouz Square presented a considerable deviation from the established norms of street design in Egypt at that time through its commemoration of a contemporary figure in literature, the architect’s involvement in the design process and the unfencing of urban space. This event thus questions the perception of the urban street beyond our socio-cultural inheritance, and towards street design as a performative urban act that embraces the everyday activities of lay-people in the street.

The paper utilises Foucauldian discourse on power to approach a case study of an urban event and space in Egypt, which has not previously been investigated thoroughly. It thus holds potential towards the resolution of inherited conflict between the urban street and the urban institution.

Following the successful transition of Archnet-IJAR to Emerald, the introduction of new process and editorial teams, and the production of the first issue last March (Volume 13, Issue 1), the purpose of this paper is to outline key aspects of the contributions published in this edition of Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, Volume 13, Issue 1, July 2019.

Premised on two generic understandings of built environment research: conceptual frameworks and experimental fieldworks, a classification of topical contents and an identification of approaches within the studies published in this edition, a narrative on evolving interests and themes is developed to outline these undertakings.

Five themes are identified from 13 papers contributed by 27 researchers from academic institutions in 13 countries and territories. Themes include: complexity and prosperity of informal settlements and slums; east–west dialectics of environmental design research and sustainable urbanism; educating future built environment professionals; grassroots research and design strategies; and performance, perception and behavior.

Understanding and appreciating various research approaches for unveiling key aspects of built environment realities including the spatial and social dimensions would facilitate effective contributions in architectural and urban research. This is coupled with the advancing thematic aspects that enthuse a re-thinking of the key purpose of architectural and urban research while stimulating future research endeavors.

Commemorating the 15th year anniversary of discourse, knowledge dissemination in architecture and urbanism through the contributions published in Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, since March 2007, this article aims to capture, unpack and categorize the key content of published research outputs during the last five years into knowledge spaces.

While referring to key statistics of various recognized databases in order to highlight the journal growth, development and performance, the approach to the analysis is inspired by Crysler's Writing Spaces: Discourses of Architecture, Urbanism and the Built Environment. This is established through a preliminary conceptual content analysis that enables the development of specific content categories representing knowledge spaces based on the overall contributions to the journal since its inception in 2007 and then mapping the recent contributions, developed over the past five years (2017–2021), to these knowledge spaces. The thrust of the analysis is to instigate a structured understanding of Archnet-IJAR role in the development and dissemination of knowledge in architecture and urbanism.

The examination of the content and the analysis reveal two broad categories of knowledge spaces: established and evolving. Established knowledge spaces are recognized in terms of theorizing architectural and urban production; the public realm and assessment of designed environments; housing, the informal and the vernacular; urban heritage and historic environments; and architectural and urban politics. Evolving knowledge spaces were acknowledged in terms of architectural education and design pedagogy; collaborative planning and community design; architectural and urban sustainability and resilience; health, wellbeing and engaging with nature; and COVID-19 spatial and pedagogical implications. Characterized by clear definition and at the same time transparent borders, the identified knowledge spaces have the potential of generating further possibilities for future knowledge spaces.

In addition to a holistic analysis based on the scrutiny of contributions as they progressed from submissions to reviews to publishing, future work would involve more systematization, in-depth engagement with metadata and should benefit from IT applications and data mining software packages.

This article is regarded as a cognizance platform and an enabling mechanism for researchers and future contributors to identify the unique particularities of their research, the nature of the content they aim to develop and the way in which that content may contribute to one or more knowledge spaces.

Establishing an understanding of the knowledge spaces which represent contributions published in Archnet-IJAR, the knowledge spaces identified demonstrate diversity and plurality; diversity in ontological interpretations of the nature of reality and plurality and pluri-epistemology in terms of how methods are pursued and the way in which such interpretations are developed, recorded, documented and communicated. These are knowledge spaces of possibilities and anticipation of growth, evolution and development.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between brand trust and consumer doubts towards new products in the Egyptian mobile phone market. The study controls for the effects of age differences and risk aversion.

The study applies a questionnaire methodology that consists of measures adopted from existing and tested scales on a randomly selected sample of Egyptian mobile phone users. It applies multiple regression analysis in order to predict the hypothesized relationships.

The research findings reveal that brand reliability is negatively associated with consumer doubts towards the perceived risks and the relative advantage of new products. On the other hand, brand intentions are negatively associated with doubts towards the performance risk of a new product. Besides, age and risk aversion do not control the hypothesized relationships.

This paper examines brand trust from a multi‐dimensional perspective to evaluate consumer doubts towards new products in the Egyptian context.

This study aims to examine the effects of using mobile translation applications for translating collocations.

The study followed an experimental design where 47 students of English as foreign language in a Saudi university were randomly categorized into two groups. Both the groups were given a translation task consisting of 30 sentences with fixed, medium-strength and weak collocations. The participants in the experimental group (n 23) were asked to use a mobile App (Reverso) to translate the sentences, while the control group (n 24) was allowed to use only paper-based dictionaries. The translations were scored and analyzed to measure if there was any significant difference between the two groups.

The results indicated that the mobile translation application was more effective in translating fixed and medium-strength collocations than weak collocations, and in translating collocations in both translation directions (i.e. from Arabic into English or vice-versa).

The findings suggest that integrating translation technologies in general and mobile translation applications in particular in translation can enhance the translation process. Students can utilize mobile translation applications to enhance their translation skills, especially for translating collocations.

The paper discusses current trends and future developments in the study of people-urban environment relations, with an emphasis on the concept of diversity within the Gulf cities. This is explored in relation to: theoretical approaches, urban public spaces, people's lifestyles, social groups and inclusive urban environments. Contemporary Gulf cities are providing unique examples for research on urban diversity. Its demographic structure is distinctive for a minimum of 50% expatriates in overall population. Gulf cities are obliged to cope with such a compelling fact. The challenge is to move away from indifference and bring about better acceptance of others. On the relationship; city spaces and culture, the paper argues that traditional markets must be envisioned as spaces for cultural expressions. Traditional markets are a rich display of products and talents and a great opportunity to share and meet with people from same culture and others. Using comparative analysis approach juxtapositioning the selected cases, the paper confronts questions like what does Gulf urban diversity mean in the present. In addition, is diversity in urban spaces only a challenge to be dealt with or is there also economic potential that can be taken advantage of? How do we ensure that Gulf cities are indeed spaces of tolerance? How to give visibility to the spaces of marginalized groups, as these spaces are often ignored or worse, eliminated? How to preserve or regain spaces in the city for the expression of traditional cultures of those migrating from other regions or countries? The paper explores the socioeconomic and cultural mechanisms that can encourage inclusive pluralism in the Gulf cities' open spaces.