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The project introduces a new housing concept designated to district 8 in Madinaty, a compound that is designed to become a complete city in northeast Cairo. It comprises multi-storey patio houses where each apartment would own a piece of the sky.
Madinaty
Multi-storey Patio Houses
Discipline
ARCHITECTURE
Year
2010
Workplace
Module Designers
Typology
Residential
Location
Cairo, Egypt
Scope of Work
Schematic Design, Design Development
& Archviz
The project is based on the conception of a cubic module which represents the constituent cell of the whole building, as an open-to-sky bonus room is set up for each apartment where the residents are entitled to customize their patios as they see fit.
One crucial criterion in justifying the form of the building was to devise a plan for agglomerating the cells in such a way that each patio is guranteed a certain level of visual privacy. Such a procedure would govern the design guidelines regarding the facade, as the patio would become the quintessence of the building's architectonics.
01. The Module [Patio]
The exercise of dedicating a roofless room, by deducting a fixed portion from the building's footprint in each storey, is prominent in both plan and elevation, which has resulted in a structure with a relatively lighter mass.
Instead of being placed at the core, like a traditional courtyard within a building, this time the patios would become a genuine attribute that is explicitly articulated on the facade. It features a series of extrusions and recesses projecting an uninterrupted cascade of lights and shadows, a contrast that would further create a visual depth to accentuate the patio pattern and promote it as the protagonist of the building's envelope. It is meant to mitigate the outdoors and soothe the arid climate, where the patios would act as threshold pockets for such an airy and uniquely permeable facade.
02.The Prototype [Mat-building]
The prototype was propagated across the layout in clusters so that the juxtaposition of masses and volumes would permit the diffusion of light and the provision of privileged views.
