Gozour Work Po r t fo l i o
Find a Job You Love and You’ll Never Work a Day in Your Life Confucius
Contents Gozour 01 Awards 03 Exhibitions 11 Experiments 17 Researches 35 Product Designs 39
18, Masjed Belal St, Hay Al-Gama’a, Al-Mansoura, Dakahlya, Egypt +20 1010 6600 40 http://gozourstudio.com info@gozourstudio.com Note: This booklet contains works by Gozour members, as a group or individuals, with or with out partners outside of Gozour. For more information, contact Gozour.
Gozour Between an old reality and a new architectural approach, our vision stands on the values gained from the opposites; a starting point, without a visible ending point at the moment. We are taking advantage of different aspects of the architectural field to create a network for sharing knowledge, experiments, ideas and visions. Between architectural practice, lab experimentation and research; our logic is growing smoothly. Our aim is to participate in the paradigm shift of our community, giving the market meaningful goal, and liberating the academic path from its rigidity.
‎Abdul-Malik Saeed Graduated in 2007 from Mansoura University; Practiced architectural design management in Abu Dhabi since graduation. Currently obtaining his M.Arch program in Dessau Institute of Architecture (DIA) in Germany.
Ahmed al-Badawy Architect, lecturer, and photographer. Master of Architecture from Dessau Institute of Architecture, Germany, 2012. Graduated from Mansoura University, Egypt and practicing architecture since 2007.
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Ahmed Yahia Enab Graduated in 2007 from Mansoura University; obtained his master’s degree in architecture from Cairo University in 2012. A practicing architect since graduation, and also a part-time lecturer since 2008.
Sameh Mohamed Awad Graduated in 2007 from Mansoura University; obtained his master’s degree in design from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012. Practicing architecture along with interior and product design since graduation.
Yasser Moustafa Mehanna Master of Architecture, practicing architect since 2007. Started teaching architectural design at MET Academy in Mansoura in 2009. Joined the M.Arch Program at Dessau Institute of Architecture (DIA) in Germany, 2010.
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Awards Cairo, Egypt. 2011 Selected for Finals A Quest for the Sky (Vertical City) The aim of the tower is to simply solve the horizontal layout of a city on a vertical axis, maintaining the qualities of traditional city designs, specially the direct access of each private courtyard to the sky.
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Mecca, K.S.A. 2010 Second Prize King Khaled Bridge Development The formation of any shape in this project came from directly from the cell. It is the main unit responsible for formation. The cell is placed on a sensor plate all over the bridge wall it takes it’s energy directly from the sun, it has three levels of extrusion to help the fibers pass by it. Treated optical fibers with navigation sensors and weather treatment are used to form the designed shape it came from ground pass the cell then connected to the storage in the top of the cell. 04
Mecca, K.S.A. 2010 First Prize A Matter of Life and Death (Al-Mualla Cemetery Mural) This proposed design tries to capture an interpretation of the inevitable life after death. And what better interpretation can one find than that of the holy Quran, “Know that god gives life to the earth after its death! Indeed we have made clear the signs for you, if you but understand” (Holy Quran 057-017). We’ve done nothing but try to give the meaning of this verse - as we interpreted it - a visual form.
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Cairo, Egypt. 2009 Second Prize Bio-School (School of The Future) Bio-school is the idea of converting the education system to a biological simulation of some behaviors from nature to support the compatibility of people. In the depth of the complexity of Egyptian communities, bio-school flows and grows smoothly through complicated social aspects. Bio-school considered itself as a layer from the city/village urban fabric that deals with poverty of minds as connected network not a solid box.
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New York, U.S.A. 2009 Merit Award Of Remembrance and Awaiting (The House of War) What is war? We’ve answered this question in more than ten ways, but the one that stuck was that war is the suspension of life. As war starts the natural way of life is paused, and a wait immediately starts; A wait for life to start again. The idea was to resemble the answer we reached in a form of a story, a human case, an incident that may really have happened.
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Cairo, Egypt. 2007 Second Prize Under the Bridge, beside the Nile (Where Community Meets Art) In this proposal we tried to create a new space generated by simulating the scenario of forming islands by the Nile. This space is formed by covering strips. Each one of these strips has a smooth curved path, in some areas they have sudden deviations from their paths and then come back again; This creates some new special spaces that have different identities and characteristics.
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Cairo, Egypt. 2006 First Prize A River Walk (Where Community Meets Nature) The goal of this design was to highlight the relationship between the Nile River and the city in the form of an equation which has it’s own variablets (Nile, Heritage & Community’s Beliefs). We tried to declare an architectural language representing to the public a new understanding of all the surrounding context. The geometry of crenulations on the Egyptian facades has morphed the visual image of the Landscape.
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Exhibitions Venice, Italy. 2012 Perplex Apex An emergent phenomenon arises from a range of alternative choices of components of various types and sizes, creating both diversity in connectivity and levels among components. This selection depends on both urban geometry and urban fl exibility, with system evolution generating connections that cross both modular boundaries and distinct scales.
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Venice, Italy. 2012 Tychonian Sehnsucht Everything started from a point. The most abstract point in the middle of the mountains in the North. From there, the rotation started. In the beginning it was totally unclear what was all about. A gigantic organism slowly emerged from the ground, swallowing the land in a recursive spinning movement of expansion. Its fibers were ceaselessly weaving with each other, creating a continuously shifting scenario of growth.
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Dessau, Germany. 2012 Vertebral Column This project was a trial to create a Syntax from Meisterhaeuserin Dessau, then use wooden BBQ sticks to create an element that can recompose what’s in the diagram from data. As for the final prodect is the designer’s point of view from reading the diagram.
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Berlin, Germany. 2010 Lean-To (Workwall Workshop) Lean to the wall of project site is the proposed concept to get the required spaces for Pfefferberg work space by minimum visual and physical affect on the project land. The project investigats a new work environment for users and capture the benefits of nature and integrate the working spaces into the site topography. By using neutral elements and connecting the users with their environment to get the maximum level of the transparency, our office wall introduce a different kind of work space.
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Experiments Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2012 Semi-Coded Furniture We are living in a secret coded universe. We are solving these codes daily through science discoveries. The rule of designer should be coded. After modernism, post modernism contemporary. We should give hints for the people but not to direct them. The project aims to hint people to explore more through designing uncompleted pieces of furniture and giving the people the freedom to shape them based on their needs.
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Dessau, Germany. 2012 State of Matter (Sublimation) A trial of representing to concept of matter state transformation in an structural form, testing the structures that come out of using a material in a certain state and monitoring the structural performance of them after the material transforms to the solid state.
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Dessau, Germany. 2012 The Fizz Expiramenting the different fabrication logics besed on the design of one element and the way it’s put together with the others. The design took four months until a coponant was desided, the actual fabrication time is 48 hours. 19
Amsterdam, Netherlands. 2012 Fire Table The project aims to redefine interior space through redefining the objects in the space itself. The event: Lunch for 40 designers coming to one space to share ideas in one day. No pre-study for the space was done, nor were the objects in the context defined. Through redefining the context a flexible hinged table was designed with materials around that can be easily lifted or dismantled for a different use of the space. The definition for a table was rediscovered within the context itself (A table with No legs). 20
Barcelona, Spain, 2011 Gaudi Gallery (Barcelona Fusion) We decided to have some relation in our project and relate it to Barcelona’s famous architect Antonio Gaudi, through one of his buildings: The Casa Mila. In addition to that, we have chosen a natural element, the walnut, to research more and look for inspiration qualities.
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Los Angeles, U.S.A. 2012 2.00 AM Villa (A Concept Villa for the 21st Century) The design reflects the particular lifestyle of the American musician ‘Moby’ and apply his music features on the form and function makeing it unique for a particular life scenario.
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Barcelona, Spain. 2011 The Diagonal Sonar (Salon Sonar) Salon Sonar is a famous festival music in Barcelona and still one the most important annual events in the city. The project is one of sonar’s locations but here by redefining the event and using some influenced qualities of the city and also music terms, the design considered the environment forces ‘outside the building’ and users forces ‘inside the building’ to affect the form and show how the function can be developed by people actions and reactions. 23
Dessau, Germany. 2011 Plasticity and Rubber (Understanding Geometry) The experiment is an attempt to find a stable structure by incubating a set of skew sticks within an elastic shelter. after it gets stable the stick are connected to each other by tension wires to stay stable after removing the elastic sheltering surface. then a stable structure skeleton is ready for use.
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Maribor, Slovenia. 2012 Bridging The Gap An algorithm that is based on the movement of a set of spheres with a predefined locations points on their surfaces. this Algorithm can be a starting point for generic solution that produces a series of curvatures with different densities. These densities have the possibilities to perform as a structural systems. This logic can generate a group of families of solutions, the common aspect of all of them is the gradient of the blurriness quality.
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Barcelona, Spain. 2011 Intensive Modulation The Design is a representation of one of the most famous musical events in the world. The point was to express new tectonics as a result of simulating mathematical properties of a sonic waves. In other words the form is generated from a simulation of wave modulation as a an intensive property.
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Barcelona, Spain. 2011 Tangles and Leaves (Barcelona Fusion) A design of a flower nursery based on an exploration of the possibilities of employing fibrous cells to create space enclosures. The main trajectory of the design was to investigate how the repetition and the growth of fibrous cell would help to achieve a gradient of different levels of enclosure. The cells start as a group of tangles, and end as a group of plant leaves.
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Dessau, Germany. 2011 Knitted Plastic Pipes We have started to follow one of our solutions that we did for the idea of weave conduit pipes with cable ties as a connecting elements. We started to produce the required quantity of three types of the unit which have three, four and five ends. Then we connected the whole units by using cable ties with specific logic behind the process. During the model process, we tried to create interactive and useful spaces for the child which have variety of construction ideas. 28
Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf, Germany. 2012 Adaptive Growth Processes A repetitive action of stretching a stream strip of spider silk where in each round it’s increasing the pressure which sometimes is 25 times the weight of the spider, all this is to extract all the liquid from the fl y and leave it with just a very light cocoon.
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Dessau, Germany. 2011 The Grid (2D/3D Workshop) Deforming the normal grid to create a new geometry with specific logic behind it. The idea started from simple and normal grid to explore the new geometry with understandable rules. The process started from a hexagonal 3d grid. There were chosen three nonconsecutive points on each polygon which were moved on Z axis and towards the center. The modified grid was mirrored on XY plane and then copied on the Z axis. 30
Dessau, Germany. 2010 Interlocking system The Experiment is an investigation of the power of interlocking a group of basic triangular cells in a form of a larger hexagonal unit, which itself interlocks with similar units to create a system that can perform as shelter of a space.
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Cairo, Egypt. 2010 Lotus Columns (Parameterized Breeding) Parameterization is the process of assigning parametric attributes to a geometrical model which will determine how the geometrical components will vary. In other words is the process by which an explicit model is transformed into a parametric model. Applied to a historic architectural element; like the lotus column head, infinite variations could be produced opening the possibilities for the evolution of the element.
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Cairo, Egypt. 2010 Muqarnas (3D Surface Tessellation) Muqarnas is usually designed by drawing the plane projection of the muqarnas elements. Tessellation is the process of creating a two-dimensional plane using the repetition of a geometric shape. The idea here was to produce muqarnas from the tesselation of a surface, directly in a 3d space.
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Cairo, Egypt. 2009 Infinity Strips (L-Systems) A L-system or a Lindenmayer system is a parallel rewriting system, famously used to model the growth processes of plant development, along with the morphology of a variety of organisms. Here it was used to generate ever growing interlacing strips inspired by Islamic ornamental ribbons.
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Researches Cairo, Egypt. 2012 Reviving the Roots (A Study in the Reconstruction of Architectural Elements) Starting from a conceptual hypothesis which views an architectural style as an evolving dynamic system, similar to that of a biological species, the thesis tackles a fundamental question: could a building type be comprehended the same way a biological organism is; in the sense of extracting its hereditary information - its genome? In order to test this hypothesis a sample building type (organism) is selected from a specific architectural style (species); namely the Quba (mausoleum) of the architectural style of Muslim Egypt, approximately between 1100 and 1500 A.D.
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Cairo, Egypt. 2012 RCC Recycling City of Cairo (Parametric Collaborations) RCC is the vision of how world systems can absorb informal communities and integrate it into other planned communities. It’s the idea of investigating the power of this part of the city and inspire world megacities by their solutions. RCC is proposed recycling system from Manshiyat Naser community. It is tested system for many decades from people who work and live in this condition with higher than 80% recycling efficiency. RCC is the new self-sustained community where people can build their spaces from their work, everything recyclable or from recycled materials, cycle of money running inside the community to develop their recycling system and creative ideas can be applied in and out of this community.
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Green Brick: The target of proposing this physical model is showing the ability of creating an experiment for sustained brick from recycled materials. Used plastic bottles, some cardboard sheets, soil and some plants to grow are the brick parts, It is our simple experiment to show the ability of using recycled material to build an architecture element which can be the base of building wall or any kind of living use. 38
Product Design Doha, Qatar. 2011 Now Clock An open resource project that you can build it yourself in home. The Now Clock is a new definition of what time is. We are running to achieve a self-planned schedule daily. The Now Clock aims to reschedule your time based on outdoor/indoor information such as weather, traffic and how many hours you stayed in the house. The clock aims enjoy the perfect time keep you healthy and take NOW actions.
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Fabrica, Italy. 2010 Difference is Good Glass has been always a symbol of purity and clarity. It is used to reflect and refract. While we was digging to express the consensus of civilizations in which human civilization has been always complemented and flourished by the concept that difference is good; glass is a perfect example to express that. The idea was to implement two iconic designed jars expressing Western and Middle Eastern cultures into each other with a secret hidden path connecting them forming the heart handle.
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