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A very ambitious urban project, called the «Gate Residence», is being developed in Cairo, on al Nozha Street in Nasr City (vital street).
"It is time for Cairo to witness the creation of an iconic sustainable building that would express the future of the city Victorious, after decades of urban degradation and also after the recent flip page of unrest – it represents the demand to look into the peak guidance into the future which developers would seek to track." says Abraj Misr, the developer.
Turning the city into a vertical, green, dense and hyper-connected ecosystem, the main objective behind this cutting-edge urban proposal is to create a sustainable landmark in New Cairo by transforming an efficient building mass, multiplying the perspective views towards the streets, into a huge urban oasis while raising awareness of green sustainable architecture.
The program comprises offices, housing, shopping mall and underground parking.
Volumetrically, the «Gate Residence» is organized along a central street named «the Boulevard» acting virtually as the spine of the housing project. The 1000 apartments are organized in rectangular regular buildings. The building mass is refined by the softening of all the edges. The facades of the 9 housing floors are conceived like a horizontal sedimentation of e-low glass and polished white stone. At both ends, the facades are provided with gills of fish-like sunshades.
All around, linear hollow steel joints stretch horizontally all the blocks offering an elegant global building shape. All the balconies are transformed into suspended gardens. Integrated planting beds along the facades perimeter creates create green walls falling in each courtyards.
Vincent Callebaut Architect’s ambition is to create a new green building benchmark in Egypt combining passivhaus principles and renewable energy technology. The design team envisages a drastic reduction in the development carbon footprint with a consequent 50% energy savings compared to conventional building.
An iconic tree-like sculptural roof provides adequate shading to the whole scheme decreasing the buildings cooling demand and therefore allowing, passively, great energy saving.
The roof comprises 9 megatrees conceived as natural passive cooling system, large windcatchers, which will allow the basement areas, the patios and the inner street provide to be naturally ventilated. Windcatchers, also called "Malqaf", have been traditionally used since the Ancient Egypt. More recently, Hassan Fathy’s works have demonstrated how vernacular passive systems can be incorporated into contemporary architecture.
It is also proposed that the roof also offers the opportunity to generate energy by providing support to photovoltaic and solar water thermal technologies.
As part of the bioclimatic/passive design strategy, it is predicted that a thermal labyrinth system, a fresh air ventilation system made of pipes buried 2 to 3 meters below the ground, will serve the dwellings. Thanks to the ground temperature, which is mostly stable all year around, air temperature will be reduced passively by 5 to 8°C during a heat wave using virtually no electricity, before is supplied to residential areas.
Additional sustainable features include community gardens to grow fresh vegetable, building automation and vertical-axis wind turbines.
LEED Gold Certification is also sought for the development.
ARCHITECT: Vincent Callebaut Architectures, Paris
CLIENT: Abraj Misr, Urban Development, Cairo, Egypt
CONTRACT LOCATION: Heliopolis District, Cairo, Egypt
PROGRAM: 1000 Apartments, Offices and Shopping Mall
SURFACE AREA: 450 000 M²
BUDGET : EGP 4,5 bn.
START OF THE CONSTRUCTION : March 2015
DELIVERY: 2019
GREEN CERTIFICATION: LEED Gold Plus
LOCAL ARCHITECT: K&A Design, Injaz Development
Source: Vincent Callebaut Architect