AL HADRA Graduation Project | Socio-Commercial & Recreational Center in Siwa, Evolution movements beyond culture
Project: Socio-Commercial and Recreational Center
Location: Siwa
University: Cairo University, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture Department.
Year: 2019
Supervised by: Dr. Ahmed Abdel Ghaffar TA. Fahmy Abdel-Hamid
Project's Description:
Socio-commercial and recreational center is a project that is divided to many zones to service the community and Siwa’s tourists. The center contains four main zones: a big market that sells Siwa’s products to develop their economic base, a food court and cafeterias to serve the users and show them Siwa’s culture through their traditional , a Women and Child center that give many opportunities for women in Siwa to learn, teach and produce for her society, also, the awareness of women is a main role to learn her how to take care of her children, a Youth, Sports, and wellness center have a big function in the project as Siwa’s community contains a lot of youth that do not have the opportunity to find a place to hang out to, or to make different activities, this zone will give the youth a chance to perform their hobbies, play sports specially the football as they did not have a well-equipped playground to play freely, a bath for both genders, a gym, a theatre hall.
The project is oriented toward family users, it is not targeting men only in Siwa, but it has different services to cover all users in Siwa: men, women, children, and tourists. Here is the program of each zone that explains the functions and activities clearly.
Conceptual Deign
The first conceptual idea is creating an Economic Generative socio- commercial and recreational center, by making family members users regenerate siwa’s economic base through an interactive indoor street market through different transitional phases. Using symbolic and contextual items from Siwa like Carpet pattern and shapes, and salt lantern in conceptual form.
The second conceptual idea cohered with the first one, is the intersection of the old with the new, the old means old Shali fortress souq and traditions and the new means the economic evolution and growth and the youths’ development.
