the LEGO experiment by mahmoud fahmy

The lego experiment

The project is held on the scale of a neighborhood , taking place in an abandoed historic train station related to a nenowed economical port in alexandria the site is surrounded by various type of hybird housing typology between informalties , low class social housing, previous workers housing so the concept is to let the flow go and only interfer with a charter in the form of typologies catalouge in a trial or an experiment to test the formation of the urban context based on the previous economic political and social background as an active influencer and the exsisting context as the experiment subject to morph in the siite through the morphing in the catalouge charter

Supervised by Dr.Holger Glaydes Participation By Mahmoud Fahmy Mark Estifan Muhamed el Fouly

URBAN URBAN SPECIATION SPECIATION

site

religious buildingsreligious buildings youth centers youth centers hospitals hospitals schools schools

Mina El-Bassal

8 hectares Kafr Ashri

Kafr Ashri

366 inh/hectare

Tabyet Saleh

1,326 inh/hectare

1,326 inh/hectare Site

El-Qabbary

52 inh/hectare*

Kafr Ashri

Site

Tabyet Saleh Tabyet Saleh

Tabyet Saleh

8.3 hectares

Mina El-Bassal

8 hectares Kafr Ashri

Kafr Ashri

13 hectares

Tabyet Saleh

8.3 Site hectares 9 hectares

El-Qabbary

135 hectares

Tabyet Saleh Tabyet Saleh

Site

9 hectares

Koum el shoqafa Koum el shoqafa

inh/hectare*

Kafr Ashri

Tabyet Saleh

Koum el shoqafa

92% of the proposed plot times 1.38 6539 inhabitants

44% of the proposed plot times 2.27 7491 inhabitants

92% of the proposed plot times 1.08 11937 inhabitants

97% of the proposed plot times 1.03 500 inhabitants

social housing

Total density

366 inh/hectare

Building area

463 m2 / 0.05 h

Floors

12 floors

Unit/floor

8 units

Unit area

100 m2

110 m2

Number of inh.

480 inhabitants

150 inhabitants

Number of blocks 17 block

Total density

1,326 inh/hectare

Total density

52 inh/hectare

157 m2 / 0.015 h

Building area

463 m2 / 0.05 h

Building area

660 m2 / 0.066 h

Floors

4 floors

Floors

5 floors

Floors

5 floors

Unit/floor

3 units

Unit/floor

6 units

Unit/floor

6 units

Unit area

52 m2

Unit area

70 m2

Unit area

Number of inh.

60 inhabitants

Number of inh.

150 inhabitants

Number of inh.

site analysis

DSVII Alexandria Dialogues

Muhamad El-Fouly | Mark Estafan | Mahmoud Fahmy

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Cotton Burse Est. 1883

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Makkabes el Cotton established in 1889 is no longer used in the cotton industry and they are renting the spaces as storage for other companies

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Train Repairing warehouse ElQabbary Mosque built in 1860

Linear structures that were used as a storage for goods when the station were functioning

Railways was the mainstation for passengers and goods till 1876 when el bab el gedid station were built for passengers only but the frieghtrail kept functioning till 1928 when Misrstation were built. Trains and goods transportation still operates in this area. Dekhela port was established in 1892.

Kafr Ashry nowadays is hosting 10,000 inhabitants and the urban fabric did not change since the mid of the 19th century, when the workers of the cotton industry started inhabit the area. In 2003 different projects and proposals started to appear to develop the area but nothing realized

El Qabbary Neighborhood were built in 1700s and it was named after (elQabbary)

1700s

1805

1810

1829

1854

ElQabbary Neighbourhood

Kafr Ashry cotton storages

Menna Elbassal

Port (Terrsana)

ElQabbary Station

1860

1876

ElQabbary ElBab Mosque Elgedid train station

1889

1892

1928

1967

2003

Makkabes ElCotton Company

Dekhela port

Misr Station

liquidation of the cotton industry

Kafr Ashry unrealized proposals

URBAN SPECIATION

The Strategyy

Shifting the public scope of interest the freight railway has always had, from being the key route of transporting goods to and from the Dekhela port, to being a valuable plot of half vacant land following the sheer decline in trading rates after 2011. The availability of land and the proximity to low services areas of Alexandria such as kafr ashry, gabbary and tabyet saleh, have not gathered enough market momentum that seduce actors of the real state sector to speculate around the site due to its condition as being part of the national railway network and its key role for .transporting goods, to and from the port

The low speculation status accompanied by the current low operation at its premises has rendered the empty areas within the vicinity of the station as a peculiar condition of stagnation that there is no enough influx of power that can act within the market dynamics and hierarchy of power or governance to propose a scheme that deprives a part so crucial to Egypt economic thriving from part of its operations and management space. Outlined by kafr ashry

which suffers from sever lack of appropriate housing schemes and accessibility to services accompanied by Alexandria’s overall acute need for housing to compensate the staggering increase in number of residents in recent decades poses a question of re-appropriating space and reprogramming of available structures to try and reach a solution to a much complex question of housing yet the relative temporality of the economic conditions does not suffice the insisting relevance of the question of housing. Retracing the start of kafr ashry and gabary areas, shows that people started to move to those areas last decade due to availability of working opportunity, thus posing a rhetoric of what constitutes what? Does the factory created the house or the house needs the factory

1:10,000

DSVII ARCH1001 . ALEXANDRIA DIALOGS . INVESTIGATING THE CO-CITY

Muhamad El-Fouly | Mark Estafan | Mahmoud Fahmy

URBAN SPECIATION

The approach that we wanted to follow through out the proposal was to work within the contexts and factors of the situation not with them. The aim was to maintain an extent of intensified flexibility in regard to urban block definitions and network hierarchy that allows an interchangeable appropriation of the block from housing to industrial scale and vice versa. Thus the urban block, with its constituents of house/structure, void/public space, as the main battlefield that is always in tension waiting to be reclaimed by what ever programme is redeeming at the time. This framework of scaled and rescaled urban block resulted in a new architectural language that is not repetitive and is organized through out the site to maintain a flexible projection of program when a change is needed and is in contrast/harmony with the already existing structures that are to be .reprogrammed The architecture language is structured to incubate key factors in the site; Mahmoudya canal, western edge of the site facing the operating rail way, level difference between kafr ashry and the plot and the History bridge. the main strategy is to work between a level of meticulous intervention according to each specific situation and maintain a level of coherent diversity through out the master plan. the intervention consists of a definite design of various building blocks that instigates various areas, building masses and fabrics that sustain social diversity and affordability to different social groups. At the same time the assumed appropriation of urban/industrial block by the rail way is achieved by a seamless acquisitions of the structures and their accompanying voids which double as urban voids of activities and their scale and specifications could be treated as a .incubator of businesses The adjourning edge of the rail way operates as a receiver of activities that grows naturally according to the simultaneous use of the facing housing block, giving the edge, an identity and a program for itself. The canal as a water body is reintegrated through two specific urban acupunctures that bridge the disintegration that has came by as a result of the separation between the site and the canal through the 18 m wide street, thus bridging the canal back to the urban block as a new embark towards total regeneration of the use value of the canal. All of the above factors work in relation to one another and in response to one another at the same time, that the neighbourhood life we target is not a monotonous continuous cycle of repeated routines and activities but rather a contingent metamorphosis of shaping and reshaping the programming of its essence. needs the factory

1:5,000

The catalouge 1

1. mosque 2. church 3. jewish temple 4. theater 5. museum 6. library 7. art center

2.A + 4.B + /

2.A + /

7.A X 7.A + 4.B

catalogue | amendments

4.A + 4.B + /

DSVII ARCH1001 . ALEXANDRIA DIALOGS . INVESTIGATING THE CO-CITY

5.A + 2.C + 2.D + /

4.C + /

1.F + /

7.F + 6.F + 5.A + /

geometrical treatment

Muhamad El-Fouly | Mark Estafan | Mahmoud Fahmy

URBAN SPECIATION

1 3

1. office building

6. nursery

2. office (one floor)

8. education center

3. start-up office blg 4. school 5. vocational center 5 1

1. clincs 2. clincs (one floor) 3. gym 4. pharmacy 5. hospital

3 2

1. football field (5 players) 2. youth center 3. sport club 4. microbus stop 5. toktok stop 6. parking lot

URBAN SPECIATION

a c b

1:500 e

ee 1:400

DSVII ARCH1001 . ALEXANDRIA DIALOGS . INVESTIGATING THE CO-CITY

Muhamad El-Fouly | Mark Estafan | Mahmoud Fahmy

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tiles mortar sand membrane concrete

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tiles mortar sand concrete

0.12m 0.2m 0.02m 0.12m

tile blocks 0.06m sand 0.02m soil 0.02m earth W Q® µw Q[£¢

1:200 DSVII ARCH1001 . ALEXANDRIA DIALOGS . INVESTIGATING THE CO-CITY

1:20 Muhamad El-Fouly | Mark Estafan | Mahmoud Fahmy