THESIS PROJECT REPORT OUTLET/EXHIBITION COMPLEX
Designed by: Ayahtullah Mohamed Amin ID: 900080005
Project’s Concept:
With the help of various NGO’s, people at the garbage village especially women and girls produce handmade environmentally friendly products like Rug Weaving, Patchwork, and items made of recycled paper like gift bags, shopping bags, accessories made of paper, and bookmarks.
Those products are of high quality and good taste and they are attractions and inspirational sources to famous designers an example of which is Marc Jacob who even included some of the bags the villagers make in his stores and website. Moreover, the stuff is sold in outlets in Maadi, Zamalak and other areas around Cairo for all eco-friendly customers. My project being an exhibition-outlet complex for those products, its main focus is on how special and unique the process and the people behind the products are. So it is not only an exhibition to display the items or an outlet to sell them, it is a complex that offers the experience of shopping in a culture rich environment and capitalizes on the human aspect of the garbage village and how people in there in such conditions can still have the beauty inside them to produce beautiful work like the ones they do. In a nut shell, the products that are being marketed in the project are: The sustainable handmade goods and the creators /designers of those goods.
Concept Statement Our Problem Statement: “Social barrier and lack of culture acknowledgment lead a community with great potential to isolation” Our Thesis statement is: “Recycling as a tool for inside out approach for re stitching an isolated strong community and expanding its potential” Therefore, my project’s concept is:
“Utilizing the human aspect of Recycling to socially and physically restitch a community with great potential”
 The project relevance to the thesis statement: It capitalizes on the uniqueness and strong points of garbage villagers which is recycling and creating a cultural experience and orientation through shopping. The project help in telling the story behind the items being displayed in terms of process and real life people. All online sites talking about garbage village narrates the successful stories of people there and how they overcome their barriers and tough way of living. One of the main aims of the project is to bringing those stories to life by creating a cultural journey through shopping. When this is achieved the re stitching between people from the outside and inside happens. The outside will get to know more about what is going on inside, how people are living, and they will get to appreciate and recognize the community inside. Moreover, the project will give the isolated garbage village people an opportunity to open up to the outside community and get exposed. My hope is that in the future, designers of the items could have their own official line of production in the fashion industry.
 Precedent: American Girl Place Store
A project that has the same essence as my project is American girl place store: The store main concept is about giving their customers a meaningful shopping journey. They give you a book about your doll, history, whether it is an African American, Asian American, Latino, Indian American whatever, and then narrates their stories, which state they come from, etc‌. and You can take a picture with your doll and get some souvenirs from there. You can make a new hairdo for the doll. Girls and their mothers can have brunch or breakfast with your doll. There are tours where you get to hear stories of all dolls not just yours. Moreover there are events where girls get to meet authors of their dolls book in person.
So basically it is a celebration of the American cultural diversity and the American history with each doll and it promotes meaning and personalizes the dolls so they are not just dolls anymore.
 Relevance of precedent to my project: This example brings life to the dolls and the same idea applies to my project; It is about bring those handmade products into life by drawing buyers attention that there are people behind those items. This should be achieved architecturally through their shopping experience. It will be more like a celebration of the strength and the success stories of the people in the Garbage village and as a result giving
them the sense of self accomplishment and letting people from the outside get to appreciate what is going on in the area and as a result the stitching happens.  Target group: The complex will host a mix of people from different backgrounds where the re stitching on the cultural as well as physical level will take place. So we will have: -The Target customers who are those interested in sustainable and rich in culture products. Those will be from all over Cairo - People owning or renting the shops or the exhibition areas.
-Sales people selling in the stores -Designers of the products -International customers and tourists  Financial contribution to the community: -Providing new job opportunities for sales people and designers of the products. - They will sell their products immediately without intermediaries which will maximize their profit.
Spaces in the project: Exhibition Hall Outlets/shops
Demo areas
Meeting Rooms Get to know the designers Do it yourself Customer service Cafeteria
There will be spaces for displaying process and people behind products in terms of videos, photo galleries, small brochures, Conference halls where makers from the garbage village would come as guest speakers and tell their stories and mingle with shoppers, there will also be places for live demos of the process of weaving and the like; kind of like in restaurants when you have “alforn al balady” with a lady where you get to see how bread is baked live. Those spaces and the shops will be strongly related zoning wise, it will be more like a designed path or maze where you have to go somewhere to reach somewhere else. All this is to integrate the shopping experience with the cultural aspect. Also there will also be Meeting Rooms for business meetings and the like. The cafeteria will be serving both the outlet and the museum.
 Space Program Total area of the plot: 7500m2 with the percentage of built area: 45%
Space zoning
Area (m2)
Exhibition Hall
1500
Shops
2000
Demo areas
500
Meeting Rooms
200
Get to know the designers
300
Do it yourself
300
Customer service
20
Cafeteria
100
Total
3420
2% 0%
Chart Title
Shops
6% 4%
Exhibition Hall
6% 31%
Demo areas Meeting Rooms
10%
Get to know the designers Do it yourself 41%
Customer service
 Criteria of the design Interactive design:
In order for the design to become interactive it will include: -Digital interactive billboards and video screens showing images and short stories about the designers and people of the area. - Areas where they will get to meet the designers having one on one conversation or having the designers make presentations. - Areas where visitors will create their own bags, bookmarks, and more and have them as souvenirs. - Areas where you watch as some of the hand made products are being done and then you can get it personalized made just for you.
 Relation of plot to the surrounding site:
It is the gateway to the complex and thus the attracting point. Since retail and shopping is what attracts people, therefore it has a commercial function to it. This way it will encourage people to get in the complex and explore what is next. It is in proximity with the museum and it is plot location has access to the garbage village as well as a great view from the other side where the plot is elevated from the ground level.
Concept development logic and direction of thinking: Since the project is focuses on the Product and the Process and People behind the Product. Hence there are three important key words to the project “Product, People, Process”. Also in order for my project to be successful and achieve its goal of an enriching cultural shopping experience as well as being an educative project, there should be an interactive design. Which is mainly not making the people come as passive visitors, rather visitors should come and do stuff and be part of the experience rather than just coming and purchasing your stuff and then going. Also it should be a place where there will be mingling between people from the outside with the people from the outside in a common place where they mix and some common cultural activities.
Product
Process
People from the outside
Interactive design
People
People from the inside
 Progress: 1- Totally separating Physically between areas of people from the outside and people from inside with linkage of a bridge between both.
EXHIBITION
WORKSHOP
BRIDGE
ďƒ˜ Creating the retail as a Spine (An Atrium) that connects between the workshop and the exhibition and as a main attractor to both my project and the whole complex.

Final Design zoning:
Product
Retail
Process
Workshop
People
Exhibition
Workshop:
Cafeteria
Workshop area like el fagnoon Display area like el forn el balady
Exhibition:
Interactive screens with movies and pictures of designers with the products they designed
Retail:
Shops in Atrium as magnet for visitors for both my project and the whole complex
Gap Filler: Accordingly the people who will be in the project will be divided as wise: Retail Workshop
Sales people from the garbage village People helping visitors out with their knitting and displaying their process
Exhibitions
Mainly visitors seeing the interactive screens and the products
displayed for designers Therefore, Retail Workshop Exhibition
People from inside People from inside People from outside
The gap filler where people from the outside and from the inside will mingle will be the semipublic area. Where it will act like Pritzker pavilion in Chicago but on a much small scale. There could be people performing, concerts, plays, black and white movies, documentaries.
Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago
Workshop Exhibition
Retail Semipublic area
 Form generation: Simple and more like what people in the garbage village are used to so that would not feel alienated from the place. Modernized Mashrabeya inspired mesh: However, to give it a bit of a modernizing edge, I used a pattern based on geometric patterns in The traditional Egyptian Mashrabeya, but in a more deconstructed modernized manner.
It was used in pergolas, Elevations, openings, and ceiling of atrium as shown in the below rendered shots:
 Final plans:
 Final Sections:
Final Elevations:
Final Poster:
ď&#x201A;ˇ Work cited Page: -"American Girl, Follow your inner star." . American Girl, n.d. Web. 14 Mar 2013. <http://www.americangirl.com/stores/events_index.php>. Association for the protection of the environment. APE, Cairo, Egypt, n.d. Web. 14 Mar 2013. <http://www.ape.org.eg/Success.html>.