Festival Plaza El Gouna / Studio Seilern Architects

Eco-friendly City – Located on the West coast of the Crimson Sea, El Gouna is positioned roughly 25km Northwest of Hurghada Worldwide Airport. The resort city is nestled on a 36.9 million sq. metre stretch of land between the Crimson Sea Coast and Egypt’s Jap Desert Mountains. The resort was based in 1989 by Egyptian entrepreneur and engineer Samih Sawiris with the mission to create a contained, self-sustaining ecosystem. El Gouna takes its title from the Arabic for “the lagoon” and extends over ten kilometres of beachfront with many quaint lagoons and acclaimed structure. El Gouna is Egypt’s most environmentally pleasant vacation vacation spot. It has roughly 20,000 residents who profit from services equivalent to a completely outfitted hospital, day-care centres, worldwide and nationwide colleges, three Marinas, two golf programs (irrigated with recycled water and from the city’s personal desalination vegetation), 18 motels, a college, and an airport. Due to its gentle local weather, El Gouna hosts many internationally acclaimed cultural and sports activities occasions all year long. A solar energy plant on the outskirts of the city at the moment churns out about 20% of the town’s power wants. Plans are already in place to construct one other certainly one of an identical measurement that would gas round 7000 households. This worthwhile supply of fresh power is a vital complement to the Aswan Dam, which additionally supplies hydroelectric energy for the town’s rising inhabitants. As well as, many motels have their particular person micro-level photo voltaic provides from lamps to water heaters throughout rooms and meals and beverage venues. In 2014, El Gouna grew to become the primary place in Africa and the Arab area to obtain the UN-sponsored World Inexperienced City award.

Report-Breaking Development Course of – The primary part of the mission contains the plaza, the colonnades, and the lagoon. After laying the muse stone in July 2019, the development began full velocity by erecting the 147 precast concrete columns to kind the colonnades. 3,000 building staff labored for 16 weeks round the clock, pouring 7,500 m3 of concrete to finish the primary part on time. The proximity of water our bodies within the neighbouring developments was an vital think about inserting the advanced in the midst of a big lagoon. The monumentality of the construction is intensified by means of reflections, whereas the constructing merges with its surroundings. The brand new 30,000m2 lagoon is a gravity-based system, equipped from present wells and linked to the present lagoon system. Relatively than counting on mechanical pumps, utilizing the present pure water system as a supply was most well-liked as an environmental design strategy. The open-air public plaza protected by the colonnades of staggered arches is a significant spatial aspect of the advanced, permitting it to host quite a lot of occasions all year long.

Christina Seilern, Principal of Studio Seilern Architects, stated: “Louis Kahn said that ‘Structure is like frozen music’. Within the Gouna Convention and Tradition Centre, the massing, the connection of constructing and water are designed in such a manner that the customer will really feel moments of shock, of surprising juxtaposition between the inexperienced panorama, the water, and the monumentality of the construction. The sunshine filters by means of the arches, making a altering rhythm and play. The constructing is in a relentless state of flux or motion by means of its reflection within the water, and the character of its transferring shadows… On this constructing, we wished the structure to be like a melody… Not frozen however enchanting. There’s a deliberate want (and hope) to create an area that delights and surprises its viewers.” Engineer Samih Sawiris, Chairman of Orascom Improvement Holding, remarked, “Gouna Convention and Tradition Centre has all the time been a dream that I wished to attain. I fell in love with classical music by going to lots of of live shows by the Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan, and my purpose is to make the Gouna Convention and Tradition Centre a world music live performance corridor.” On his half, Khaled Bichara, CEO of Orascom Improvement Holding, “Orascom Improvement has assembled the Gouna Convention and Tradition Centre with the most effective of all experience world wide to ship its imaginative and prescient and promise. Architects, engineers, and specialty consultants are icons inside their professions and workforce as much as ship the dream. This may put El Gouna on the map of worldwide occasions and conferences.”