Masterplan il Monte di Galala, the new city of Ain El Sokhna

In January 2015 5+1AA was awarded for the Masterplan of the new town of Ain El Sokhna, which will be built on the Red Sea about 150 km from Cairo and 100 km from the Suez Canal. After a selection of 25 international professional offices, the commission, “Tatweer Misr”, Egyptian society, has identified a short-list of six participants; under the successive interviews, 5+1AA has been awarded as the winning company. The project will be developed on an area of ​​about 2,200,000 square meters and involves the construction in 5 phases of 1.3 million square meters, including leisure and accommodation, residential as well as a marina (along approximately 1 km of coastline), and entertainment activities. The importance of the intervention, together with its size, is both the positioning of another new administrative city within the Country, due to the industrial and infrastructure’s development of the country witch will be positioned midway in the stretch between Cairo and the Red Sea, and the development of industrial and road system between Cairo and the Suez Canal. For this reason, the new city of El Sokhna despite having a major tourist destination and vacation homes for the inhabitants of Cairo, will also provide residence for the users of the new city. The project will be implemented in five phases, for a total duration of eight years, from the end of 2015. The Italian design team collaborates with major local consultants in the field of infrastructure, environmental and geological facilities, and provide through their own and consultants experiences indications on aspects of sustainability. A predominantly mountainous desert terrain in direct contact with the sea, characterized the site. The project is defined by a principle of “creation of the place”, not as imposition, but as act of reading and acceptance of the territory in its topography and landscape characteristics and emerging “Soul”. For these complex urban system appears to emerge from the territory while building in the contemporary his “collection of languages.”