CASE STUDY
had crafted it . the clientele ’ s experience of elegant space , a possibility to touch , feel , and contemplate the multiple subtle material variations of textures and colors . palm straws have a natural color , brass and copper , terracotta clay color , and alabaster Egyptian store golden color , glass cooling effect with its tint of patina to give a silvery / champagne color like old mirrors . all these materials and colors were produced and fabricated by the hands of very talented a big group of Artisanal and craftsmanship .
With every project comes a territory , a context , an inquiry , and then a learning process continuously evolving into creative acts , which translates into a collaborative mode of operating , conceived while Fahmy was still a young architect at Cairo University , Faculty of Engineering in her 20s . The approach to detail and buildability of the structure is important , it is about one ’ s memory , about the research , experimentation , trials and errors , and the exploration that has gone into it , about the buildability , the understanding of how each feature and how it is done . one of the key factors and features of this project design in sustainability _ a term often overused artists , producers , manufacturers , builders , and engineers in the collaborative process , to arrive at a material , or expand and explore a material , to fold in other forms , elements , and structure . This working methodology is a process of ungrounding , in the sense of unearthing what is already there and yet so often buried under the dust , hence a re-interpreting and re-configuring . Egypt , and Cairo , have a wealth of unwavering resources of raw material , in a very raw form , from mud , sand , palms , and glass , with its own specificity and identity , and with an array of colors that is often very warm , starting from its black framing the Nile , once used to refer to Egypt named as ‘ Kemet ’ in Pharaoh ’ s times , to desert colors , from red , pinkish , coppery , golden to white sands , offering a very generous palette of sunset colors , with soft pale date palms greens , that covers the vast outskirts of Cairo .
The engineering background particularly gives her a deeper intuition of possibilities , in the potentiality of making and not only design . The pinkish terracotta walls and surfaces resemble poured concrete , giving an unfinished look or a foundational feel , highlighting the boundaries and the perimeter of the space and framing them . The ridged effect on the walls is a mixture of mud , natural color pigments , hay , and local earth hand-combed by artisans working on site from top to bottom , the imperfections in it are also an expression of the hands of the artisans that
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