Cairo is the largest city in Africa and the 16th most populous metropolitan area in the world. Cairo is also ranked as one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Cairo inhabitants consists also of nomad population, which in Egypt ranges between 500,000 and 1 million, almost 1 % of the country's population. Over the centuries, their numbers fluctuated as governments alternately ignored and persecuted them. During the twentieth century, sedentarization and urban migration have caused many nomad population to become assimilated into Egypt's dominant culture. Floating desert wants to give a space for this nomadic attitudes.
Floating desert is a concept city for nomadic populations. The project starts from the idea of a physical space that allows the integration of different ways to experience the city: a permanent and a nomadic one.
In a generic district of Cairo city, this integration is given through the co-existence of columns, where permanent residents live, and a desert suspended platform for nomadic living aptitudes. Columns incorporate a mixed use with housing, social life spaces, cooling systems and vertical transports.
The façade system consists of a wall with insulation boards curtain to contain the heat storage. The platform consists of two floating freeform grids simulating a desert environment, equipped with solar panels and a water system fed by the columns cores.
Each column is completed by oasis zone: a shadow refreshment area. The nomadic platform is flexible and its form tend towards being incomplete, open, and non hierarchical. The floating desert is a place for anything tactile or tectonic that recalls the originality, locality, or essential nature of raw materials.
The building system is constituted of three levels. At the first level the “permanent” city is located. The permanent city lives in the lower level, where the existing buildings are integrated with the columns gates. Green areas and open spaces invite nomads and columns resident to enter and enjoy the new living experience.
The “permanent” and the “nomad” cities are connected through several vertical elements. The columns have central cores that allows vertical movements and include residential, services and recreational areas.
At the second level, the floating suspended platform is located and offer a flexible environment for nomad living. Oasis areas offer shadows and connect, through vertical lifts the desert with the lower permanent city. The energy efficiency of the whole building system is given by solar panels located between the sand. The tents at the top of the skyscrapers are translucent membrane structures, made of high strength steel cables and ETFE or polyester as coating material.
