Cairo, Egypt
1996
Competition
Built
Collaborative effort of Nezar AlSayyad and Tarek Abu-Zekry
Declared second place winners in a national competition; partners awarded contract for one of the buildings.
Shareket Al-Tameir Wa Al-Tanmiah, Giza, Egypt
Two sites on the same street of considerably varying sizes: the large site is a large 4400 square meter corner lot, the small site is only 480 square meters. The larger site is zoned for full residential development. The small lot requires setbacks from all sides.
The program called for the design of apartment buildings on the two sites in a manner that could visually connect them to an existing complex built earlier by the client in 1990. Each site was to have as many apartment units as the code-defined spatial envelope would allow. Both buildings were to be 10 stories high.
For the small site, it was possible to propose a single 10-story tower (#2) with each floor devoted to a luxury apartment villa (280 square meters each). For the large site (#3), it was possible to achieve 5 separate but attached structures. Three of these structures facing the main street were 10 floors with each floor containing 6 mid-sized apartments (100 square meters each). The two other structures were 5 floors with 2 apartments in each floor. Both towers were to employ the light brown facing brick on the facades and rounded corners instead of perpendicular edges. All these details were picked up from Tower # 1 built a few years earlier by the client.
