SCIENCE CITY
LOCATION / 6TH OF OCTOBER CITY, EGYPT
PROJECT TYPE / INSTITUTIONAL
For the Science City Competition, we proposed a web of buildings, landscapes, and interstitial spaces organized to clearly articulate the interdependence between different program areas and encourage an active exchange within the community of scientists, visitors and staff. The relationship between building and site/indoors and outdoors is a series of carefully mediated experiences offering ample shade, social circulation, scientific exchange, focal landscaping while capturing the solar power of the sun.
Science City celebrates modern science, its origins in the observation of natural phenomena, its continued relationship to the natural environment and Egypt’s pivotal role throughout history. Exhibits within the building will include the history of science, inspiring figures, interactive exhibits, research and future visions as well as a children’s zone. The building itself also becomes a didactic element. It will manifest the origins and the potential of science as well as incorporating the latest technology to create an energy efficient, state of the art building. The building will celebrate the relationship between technology and the natural environment.
Landscape is seamlessly integrated throughout the project, extending the interactive exhibits outdoors. Each zone of landscape uses a specific mix of plants and terrain recreating different parts of the diverse Nile River Delta and natural Egyptian landscapes. These gardens function as extensions of the interior exhibits and teach visitors about local flora and fauna, geology, and energy use using hard and soft landscape.