GENERATIVE SANDSCAPE

Siwa Oasis New Habitat

DARS Studio | Hossam Badr

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The research discusses building new communities in the desert. Siwa Oasis in Egypt was selected as the project location because of its historical background and how the Siwa inhabitants adapted with the desert using local material to build efficient architecture. Building in the desert has many challenges (environmental, physical, and philosophical). As the main cause for desertification is sand shifting, the research focuses on studying the behavior of sand shifting to use it as the potential for building with sand as a building material.

The design approach is to learn from the process through which nature is formed through millions of years by studying the cycle of erosion and sand shifting. The research has gone through many phases of study, simulation and generative design experiments on many levels, starting from urban through architecture to fabrication and materialization.

During the research part and while defining the challenges that the Egyptian government faces in building new communities in the desert -as arid areas- the focus was to learn from nature and to generate the solution out of the problem, by studying the cycle of sand solidification and erosion. The procedure involved learning from Siwian people traditional building techniques and material usage to build efficient architecture in the desert.

The urban studies on the selected site addressed the possibilities of new urban growth in Siwa. The study introduced the “Sand Travel Diagram STD” which records the movement of sand particles under the effect of wind and gravity through time intervals. The STD was applied on three topography alternatives and the result was analyzed to get to understand how the sand movement reacts to that difference.

The design proposal involved dividing the proposed site in two zones taking in consideration the results from the ‘STD’, and drainage water simulations. The first zone is composed of sand rock hills and the second one contains the sand dunes.

• For sand rock hills (zone 1), the generative design process used ‘STD’ and drainage water simulations to simulate the effect of erosion (happening on the micro level in rocks) which is then applied on the urban fabric of zone 1.

• For sand dunes (zone 2), generative design process used ‘STD’ and sand dune field simulator to define the site boundaries and as an input for the structural analysis for the building.

The building zones were optimized digitally to fit into this boundary creating efficient circulation.

Lastly, the material and fabrication were studied as sand and salt are the main building materials and the robots are to be the building labor of the new Siwa community in the desert. Robots perform more efficiently in arid areas than humans and they have shown an ability to build complex structures using pre-considered facts regarding the wind speed, sand shifting speed rates and materials properties.

 The proposal hopes to introduce generative design technologies as an alternative to the development and construction of new communities techniques in the desert, especially that the STD technique has Proven to be the main factor of influence in predicting the sand behavior throughout the design, the assessment, and execution of the project, despite of its usually-high initial costs and its need for the experience and specialization. It lives up to be an environmental and futuristic sustainable alternative.

PROJECT VIDEO