The Oasis

Helwan University in Zamalek, Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo

Idea projektu

The Oasis is a lightweight, modular community hub designed for children and youth living in Cairo’s City of the Dead. It provides a much needed space for play and learning in an area where public space and resources like water and power are scarce. By using a simple scaffolding structure, the project supports the needs of the living community while fully respecting the historical and sacred nature of the site. This intervention is a vital tool for local empowerment, offering the younger generation a safe environment to grow and gain new skills while integrating with the heritage of their surroundings.

Popis projektu

Welcome to The Oasis. Just as in the middle of a desert one may stumble upon water and discover proof of life, this intervention seeks to create that same sense of renewal and possibility within Cairo’s City of the Dead. For centuries this place has been layered with memory, silence, and survival. Today, it is not only a resting place for the departed but also a home for the living, where generations of families have grown up among tombs and mausoleums. The Oasis is a promise that life, too, belongs here.

The project is envisioned as an intervention for the children and youth who grow up in this environment, where space for play, learning, and community is scarce. It calls for the acknowledgment that to live in such a place is a need to respect both the culture of the living and the culture of the dead, neither one erasing the other. Instead, it must be a harmonious mix, a careful coexistence where each presence strengthens the meaning of the other.

To embody life, the design introduces elements such as vibrant color, cellular forms, and workshops that sustain and improve daily living. These gestures ensure that the project lives through its promises and actively supports those who inhabit it. Yet alongside this vitality remains a profound respect for death, expressed through verticality, quiet spaces of height, and the intentional absence of excessive color. In this way, the intervention balances joy with reverence, play with stillness, and growth with remembrance.

Technické informace

The Intervention is made using recycled Scaffolding Structures, the higher levels are reached by using a technique of clamping 3 standers together.
The Floors are made from heat treated corrugated metal sheets
Hand made Macramé and fabric for the facades
A self glow paint for the landscape ground for non electrical lighting solution