Manuel E. G. Ragheb l master of architecture student architecture portfolio sample
20th Century Art Museum - Berlin
Panorama
Concept The task was to design an art museum that comprises art pieces from the twentieth century. The site is facing the great New National Gallery of Mies. Other important elemetns of the site include St. Matthew’s Church, Berlin Philharmonic orchestra building and the Forum of Cultures. As a start, I visited the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin, picked an important art piece (Black Mountain College art piece), and decided to design a space for this art work. The main concern in a number of experiments was on the element of light. The design concept for the new museum afterwards was how to design a number of boxes that overlap in some parts and shift in other parts thus keep the opportunity to have light openings from above in different parts. In this way, light plays an important role in guiding the journey inside the museum. The program of the museum included art pieces before 1945, pieces after 1945, Mazrzona collection, Das kapital Raum, temporary exhibitionand other art works. The sides for the different boxes that the design is composed of are either solid totally or void totally as seen in the elevations. The aim of the design is to compose a stong architetural piece that reacts to the Mies New National Gallery. The softwares used for the design process are AutoCad, Sketchup, V-ray, and Photoshop. Site Map
Light Experiments
Ground Floor Plan
First Floor Plan
North Elevation
Second Floor Plan
Third Floor Plan
Interior Collage
West Elevation
Section
Egyptian Film Museum - Cairo, Attaba
Concept Film museums are concerned with preserving and presenting film history. But how can a museum do justice to the special features of the medium of film with its specific temporal and technical preconditions? How can film be exhibited as both an artistic product and a cultural and historical document, and how should it be contextualized? How do film museums meet the in part contradictory requirements of collecting and preserving, on the one hand, and presenting and conveying, on the other? The answers for these questions were meant to be discussed through a design task for an Egyptian film museum that speaks out of Egypt’s great movie history and at the same time works as an architectural piece with a special quality on the side of museum design. The design task requires a number of spaces dedicated to exhibition side by side with areas for storage, administration areas, film education and a number of public services. In the heart of Cairo downtown between the Opera square and the Attaba square is the new Egyptian film museum to be designed. The site chosen is a rich place with lots of historical elements. There once used to be the old Opera building. There is a number of cinemas and theaters such as the National theatre, cinema and theatre Miami and cinema Metro. The site also comprises a number of historical buildings like Abdin Palace, Sednawy and the Jewish synagouge and a number of Khedivial buildings. Above the site goes the two branches of el Azhar bridge, and beneath goes the el Azhar tunnel. The land area chosen to build on has a parking garage to the west, a post office and a fire station to the south, the National Theatre and the Azbakya garden to the north, and faces the Attaba square to the east. A film is a light projection within a dark space. The idea was to design a black box with limited openings. Each floor contains exhibitions that reflect a certain period in the Egyptian film timeline, and the upper floor contains a transpereant side that overlooks the Attaba square. One main idea in the design is the irregular crack that opens through all th floor and is the main volume around which the exhibition spaces are. The main openings for lighting and ventilation for the offices spaces are courtyards that are open from above to avoid having openings in the facades, and thus keep the idea of the black box. Site Map
Ground Floor Plan
Second Floor Plan
Section A-A
Section B-B
East Elevation
North Elevation
Interior Collage
Materials For designing the facade a suitable material had to be chosen. The most suitable material was the dark basalt. The dark basalt is a dark material with rough texture. It is suitable for a building designed in downtown Cairom where there is too much air polution, and the buildings facades always get darker by time. The basalt also could achieve the aim of the design which is to have a black box with few openings on the sides. The basalt is a material which is found in Fayoum, Egypt and has been used since ages by the ancient Egyptians to make statues.
View to Attaba Square
Exterior Shot
Nature- Inspired Tower - Cairo, Maadi
Hotel Floor Plan
Shot
Office Floor Plan
Section
Concept The task is to design a tower that is nature- inspired. The idea came from the layers of rocks by the sea. They are rough, twisting in different directions and have got a certain curvy shape as a result of the wind impact. The design depended on taking one example (slide) of this rocky curvy shape and then applying changes to it, repeating it, and giving an angle with which each slide rotates above the slide below. This was applied to form the slabs for the different levels. The built part on each floor where the main functions take place is a subset of the slab area and is made in regular shapes. The area left on the corners is made into terraces that are shaded by the effect of the slabs above. A huge portion of these areas have been made into green spaces. The site chosen is in Maadi and is overlooking the Nile. The first fifteen floors have been used as office floors while the the rest twenty floors have been made into a hotel. The twist in the tower body has made it easier that more hotels rooms are having a view to the Nile. The main structure for the tower depends on the core, and the twisted columns that have got the same motion as the tower bridge.
Physical Model
Abayomi - African Architecture Competition
Concept The task was to design a villa that is modern, afordable, making use of local materials and expressing the African local identity. The design has got to mind environmental solutions for the hot weather of Africa. Location is in Nigirea. Materials: Materials used are affordable and native. Brick was used for the wallsfor its ability to isolate heat, wood was extensively used for the many shading eaves that shade over the walls in all sides. Double glazing was used in the windows to isolate heat. Affrican Patterns were used.
Environmental Strategies: 1) The cooling Role of The Courtyard: The heated
surface of the ground loses heat to the adjacent cold air layer. The rising heated air is replaced by relatively colder air. The surface loses heat also by emitting longwave radiation. At night, the courtyard gets rid of the previously absorbed heat through emitting longwave radiation. As the surfaces lose heat, the temperature of the adjacent layer of the air gradually decreases. The cold air, being denser than the relatively warm air in the courtyard, tends to sink down, and the cold air is collected inside the courtyard. The courtyard cooling system shows how air movement can be generated by convection. After sunset, the warm air which was heated directly by the sun and indirectly by the warm bilding elements, rises and is gradually replaced by the already cooled night air. In the morning, the air of the courtyard, which is shaded by its four walls, and the surrounding rooms heat slowly and remain cool until late in the day when the sun shines directly into the courtyard. The warm wind passing above the house during the day does not enter the courtyard but merely creates eddies inside. In this way, the courtyard serves as a reservoir of coolness.
3) The cooling Role of The Dome: a curved roof has a larger convection heat-transfersurface, allowing it to be more easily cooled.When air flows over a cylindrical or spherical object, the velocity of the air at the apex is increased and, as a result, the pressure Floor Plan
at the apex is lowered. A vent has been also used to improve ventilation. When out side wind flows over a curved surface, its velocity increases and its pressure decreases at the top of the surface. The decrease in pressure at the top of the domed roof induces the hot air under the roof to flow out through the vent. The other benefit of domed roof is that during the day it received less solar radiation than flat roof based on the unit areas while radiation cooling of dome at night was more than flat ones since the full hemisphere, wider area, saw the night sky. Thus, radiant heating is minimized while radiant cooling is maximized (Lechner, 1991).
3) Cross Ventilation 4) The Use of Shading Elements: over the courtyard and the different sides of the building.
Section
Airflow patterns through a doomed roof
Shot
Parametric Vase
1- It started with a number of curves repeated above each other
2- The curves afterwards were given filleted corners
7Panelling was applied on the surface with giving U and V values
3- An axis was given to the sum ofathose curves together
4- The curves were given the command to rotate around the axes, and the angle increases from one curve to the above one
9- The scaling factor was made to depend on the distance between every cell midpoint and another point so as to give each cell a different size from the other one parametrically.
5- Scaling was performed on the curves after rotating, and the basic parameters were controlled to get a proper shape for the sculpture
6- Lofting was applied to the curves to form the main surface
11- The reult surfaces from the lofts were merged and converted to a mesh
8-The units produced of the panelling process were scaled
10- The units result from the scale where moved according to the centre point of each, and loft was carried beteen those new curves and the original ones.
12- The mesh gave a chance to have the units softened to produce the ornaments for the vase skin.
Architecture Photography - Examples
Manuel E. G. Ragheb +4917636670415 manuel.rgheb@yahoo.com