What started as an occasional gathering of friends grew over twenty years into a weekly pivot in the lives of many people of different ages, religions, professions, social backgrounds and nationalities. Dr. Ibrahim Karim gave unstructured lectures and held dialogues on many subjects following what he calls the BioGeometrical Way, which is a holistic approach towards a new and expanded world view that is both spiritual and scientific. In his words, “to be truly holistic it must incorporate anything and everything.”
Ibrahim, an architect by profession, graduated from the renowned F.I.T. Zurich, Switzerland. He later obtained Dr. Sc. degree in tourist planning. He occasionally teaches as visiting professor of architecture at several universities. Dr. Karim owns the Alemara Consulting House, an Architecture firm founded by his father Dr. Sayed Karim in the l930’s, who is the main pioneer of modern architecture in the Middle East.
While Ibrahim was still a postgraduate student, in Switzerland, a chance meeting with Dr. Mahmoud Mahfouz led to an intellectual, philosophical conversation on hospital design and other topics. Dr. Mahfouz, who later became Minister of Health, appointed him as the youngest consultant in the Egyptian government, in order to bring innovative thinking to his ministry. Dr. Karim worked in integrated health planning, developed new design concepts of flexibility and expansion for health projects and worked in the USAID project of Urban Health Development. In 1976 he was a consultant to Dubai’s ministry of health. He is a member of the British Royal Society Of Health and founding member of the Imhotep society for scientific research in the alternative sciences in Egypt. In 1982, Dr. Karim was consultant to the Minister of culture, the late Mohammed Radwan. There he generated the initial concept for the new Museum of Civilization for which the international appeal for funding was launched by UNESCO. Later on as consultant to the Minister of Tourism in 1985, he did the first tourist planning for the Red Sea and Western Sinai coastal areas. As a consultant to the Minister of Scientific Research in 1990, he was the principal investigator of the environmental pilot project on the Mahmoudiya Canal in Alexandria, and headed a unit at the National Research Center, to research the effect of geometrical shapes on biological functions. He patented the first BioGeometry shapes in 1992. Others followed. He received an award at the international congress for inventors in 1998. His work as an architect includes several hospitals, residential, scientific projects, and tourist resorts on the Red Sea.
While renovating the museum of Ancient Egyptian medicine in 1972, Dr. Fawzi Soleiman Soweha the director of the museum introduced him to the science of Radiesthesia and with him he met Dr. Khalil Messiha, who introduced him to the French system of Physical Radiesthesia and its Ancient Egyptian origins. In France at the Maison de la Radiesthesie he acquired original books and instruments used by the pioneers of this science. Fluent in many languages, Dr. Karim was able to combine modern concepts of physics, harmonics, perception and Pythagorean theories to develop a new ‘Physics of Quality’ and based on it a science of qualitative measurement: Egyptian Radiesthesia. It became the main research tool in his subtle energy work, supported by biofeedback and bio-imaging devices. Taking this research into Architecture, Geobiology, and Building Biology, he found the basis on which he developed his new science of BioGeometry.
Ibrahim is also a sportsman at heart. From light athletics to tournament table tennis, he switched to playing tennis with his children, because he believed in parenting by example. They became top tournament tennis players in Egypt and received athletic scholarships at Rice, Tulane and Loyola universities in the USA, and AUC in Egypt. His son Mahmoud is now one of the partners of the successful Advantage Tennis Academy in Irvine, California. He states: “Competitive sports gave us a positive family interaction and an opportunity to give the children freedom to grow, travel and experience life in a healthy controlled environment.”
As a former chancellor of the international Gourmet Society ‘Chaine Des Rotisseurs’, Ibrahim is certainly a connoisseur and enthusiast, collecting classic sports cars, watches, manuscripts, cameras, electronics, computers, multimedia, among other things.
He enjoys his work and has a very easy going friendly way, whether lecturing or appearing on TV. He gives seminars and workshops, in Europe, America, and the Middle East. The first seminars outside Egypt started in Holland in 1992, organized by Johan Keijser and then by Johan von Vulpen, who leads the BioGeometry Group of the Netherlands. In 1994, a collaboration with Helmut Ziehe president of the International Baubiologie & Ecology Institute USA in Clearwater resulted in several years of seminars in Clearwater, Florida. They also worked together in the Middle East projects. Dr. Robert Gilbert of the Vesica Institute, has also hosted many of Dr. Karim’s seminars and has become the first North American BioGeometry instructor followed by Dr. Michael and Patricia Maley of Creating Healthy Spaces, in Minnesota.
Dr. Karim is regularly hosted on radio and television (Reuters, CNN). He had his own daily television program: ‘God grant me knowledge’, during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, at the turn of the Millennium, on Egyptian Satellite Channel. Since March 2002 he had a weekly one-hour program on the Egyptian ‘El Mehwer’ satellite channel. He also had his first four programs of a series on the Egyptian Channel ‘Sehaty’ (My health), official channel of the Ministry of Health (2007). Since then he has appeared in many programs on Egyptian national TV, Saudi Orbit, Abu Dhabi TV, Dubai TV, MBC, and others. He was also a guest on TV programs featuring BioGeometry in Sweden (2006) and on channel NY1 in the USA with Michael Keith, Ronald Skrepich, and editor Charles Ross who featured BioGeometry in Veranda magazine for interior design.
Dr. Karim did research in BioGeometry organic planting of apples and potato seeds with Prof. Peter Mols of the University of Wageningen in Holland, and conducted a workshop to find solutions to harmful Earth radiation at the Design Academy of Eindhoven, Holland.
In Egypt he joined the “National Hepatitis C Research Project” lead by the late Dr. Taha Khalifa, Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy at Al-Azhar University. He achieved significant results. that were made public on air by Dr. Khalifa in a historic, often repeated, television program that included the former minister of Health and prominent medical doctors, in the ‘Mesaha Horrah’ (Free Space) series presented by Isaad Younis on the Orbit Satellite television channel in 1999.
The great success with the environmental projects in Switzerland (Reduction of the side-effects of electrosmog on the human, animal, and plant health and restoration of the quality of life), with Swisscom, the main cellular provider, the Mediation Authority for Mobile communication & Environment, and local governments, in Hemberg, St. Gallen (2003-4), and Hirschberg, Appenzell-IR (2005-6), which were covered in several TV channels, including SF1 the main Swiss channel in ‘Schweiz Aktuell’ and ‘Rundschau’ and received a huge covering by the press. Two books by Ruth Schaad, ‘The Miracle of Hemberg’ and ‘Pyramids, Temples, Pharaohs and Gods’ also covered those projects.
Most of his work since then was in government projects in the Middle East, that were not publicized. So it was with the Swiss projects that his work became known. Although he is constantly travelling around the world for his projects, he keeps his teaching commitments in Egypt as a professor of Architecture, where he supervises post-graduate studies (Masters and Doctorate degrees) on applications of BioGeometry and other environment topics at Cairo, Mansourah and Alexandria Universities. He has also been introducing BioGeometry to undergraduate students at the High Institute of Engineering & Architecture in 15th May city, South Cairo. In 2007, he received an award for his new futuristic path in Environmental Architecture from the University of 6th. October, Cairo.
It was, and still is, an amazing journey in an uncharted territory with many bumps along the way, but Ibrahim’s conviction and vision never faltered. I am very proud to be his partner in a journey that he believes is just beginning.
Rawya Karim