List of Academic Design Projects

1. Design Studio I:
In my second year of studying B.Arch, as the first design studio, we were asked to design our
dream house to check our approach to design. I had many ideas for this and I have selected a
piece of land near my existing house to design my dream house. For achieving my design goals, I
had referred a book written by British- Indian Architect “Laurie Baker”. My dream house has four
bedrooms, two halls, one central courtyard, and a beautiful garden on the front.

2. Design Studio II:

In the second design studio,we had to design a café or a restaurant with proper guidelines. We
had to decide a theme for the design, so I had selected Bollywood theme for my restaurant. The
restaurant was designed for family. It was designed on approximately 5000 sqft of land with
indoor as well as outdoor sittings. We had to follow the government rules with proper
peoportion of land use. My main focus was on the design and with help of my teachers, I have
started designing from the concept and by learning rules before further activities. At the end of
my design, I achieved 80% of my concept in my final design. We did not need to work on the
services except electrical. In this level of design studio, I learnt to work on concepts and electrical
services in the medium sized building.

3. Design Studio III:

The task was to design a Apartment Building on a random site. Again we had to follow all the
government guidelines with other nessesary requirements. We had to consult the local govern
body of planning in our city to get the rules of designing. After referring all the requirements, I
had started doing work on my concept, and in this design problem we also had to work on the
two services i.e. plumbing and electrical. In my Apartment Design, I followed contemporary
theme to design the elevation and there was four flats on each floor, and after some calculations
and referring government rules, my building height was 36ft (12 floor).

4. Interior Design Studio:

For this design studio the main focus was on Interior Design throughout the semester we worked
on three projects individually. The first project was for an interior design of an Artist’s studio for
which I tried to employ the use of bare concrete as a design element that would be the defining
feature of the space. For the second project it was for a restaurant and bar with an Indian Classic
theme. I employed the use of Indian patterns and motifs as well as other artforms prints. Indian
artifacts were appropriated for the design of chairs and tables. The third design was for a
Bunglow, I decided to design this on contemporary theme. The main feature of the interior is the
treatment of walls with many types of cladding materials, and its original wood furnitures.

5. Design Studio IV:

For this design studio we started working as groups of 4 on an urban renewal project for the
touristic town of El Gouna by the red sea. Our design focused on defining a main street within
the fabric which we worked on activating as an avenue that starts in the town center and leads to
the beach. Our plan consisted of activation through commercial use of the ground floor along the
street as well as employing urban elements of benches, landscape and lighting fixtures to better
define the street and make it more accessible for pedestrians. For the second part of the
semester we each worked individually on a plot of our choice along the Avenue. I decided to
design a hostel. Within the context of El Gouna most of the hotels are used for mass tourism and
all hotels are either 4 stars or above. I wanted to introduce a new user group within the
development as to be livelier. The Hostel was 3 storey building of an area of 750 m 2, consisted of
 5 single/double rooms and 10 6 person dorms. The heart of the building was the courtyard that
was open to the street. The courtyard will act as the main space of social interaction between the
hostellers and each other as well as the public. Another aspect was environmental design, the
courtyard is often an overlooked element in Egyptian architectural design, and through a modern
interpretation of the courtyard it can have a very positive effect on the micro climate within the
building.

6. Design Studio V:
As part of an agreement between Misr International University and Liechtenstein University I was
chosen with 1 other student to do 2 semesters abroad on scholarship. I joined the Urban Design
Studio. In groups of two, A Czech student and I worked on an abandoned industrial site close to
Zurich. Oberwinterthur is an old industrial site that is well connected to Zurich through railroad
that was used earlier for the transportation of products. The problem of appropriating old
industrial sites has been of major concern for the Swiss. Most of the companies in the area have
moved away from heavy industries to more high tech solutions that do not require as much of
space. The leftover area is then not utilized. The first aspect we worked on was connections, the
railroads make the area very accessible but the railroads cut it from the urban fabric around it
creating a very strong border. We worked on activating a pedestrian walkway we found in the
area that included tunnels. The second part was introducing functions that will activate the site
at all times of the day. The site is currently only activated in the mornings. From a corner of the
site that was well connected we decided to grow with residential buildings to infiltrate deep into
the site. Cultural events could be hosted in the big hangars that currently lay vacant. The
introduction of these functions will ensure the area is used all day round .. All year round.

7. Community Design Studio:

For my Second Semester in Liechtenstein also in the Urban Design Studio, Each student
individually would work on assessing one village in Liechtenstein, the first part of the semester
was all dedicated to research. We were supposed to produce plans, conduct interviews and
research relevant to the town we were assigned. I was assigned the town of Schaan which lay a
bit north of the capital of Vaduz. It is most important for having the main bus station in
Liechtenstein linking it to Switzerland on one side and Austria on the other. The research was
shared with the planning authorities of Lichtenstein. The second part of the semester was spent
on an actual intervention. In my case the intervention was focused on the main bus station. To
create a hub, I resorted to designing a building that will host a multitude of functions that will
have a bus station as part of its ground floor. The hub would have 40% commercial use and 60%
Office buildings, With a foot print of 300 m 2 , The building would be one of the biggest in
Liechtenstein acting as its gate way to Austria and Switzerland.

8. Graduation Project
My Graduation project which I worked on in Egypt was in a site in Liechtenstein. In a vacant plot
in the middle of the city of Vaduz, I worked on designing a conference center and an office
building. The Office building was to be 6 stories high, the conference center was to include one
main hall that can hold 300 people, and two smaller halls each holding 120 people. From an
Urban point of view, I decided to mirror the volume of the neighboring building for the office
building and then positioning a convention center within the old building and mine. The
conference center would be on a raised platform offering an urban plaza underneath it that will
connect to the town square. For the office building, I chose to focus on the façade design, with a
double skin façade that can be automated to enhance the climatic performance of the building
and that will react to a large seasonal change in temperatures. While the office building had a
typical floor plan, the last two stories were reserved for a lab for dental accessories giants
IVOCLAR. The floor plan had special requirements for personnel control that required a lot of
work in order to fit within the building.
9. Masters Design Studio: ICELAND - land of fairies and elves
For my first Design Studio in the Master Level, I joined the sustainable design studio. The
discourse of the design studio was focused on philosophy and sustainability. The studio professor
focused on the essays of German philosopher Martin Heiddeger and his essays on habitat and
dwelling and for all studio participants we had to relate our projects to these essays. The site
location was in Iceland and we conducted a one week excursion there. Each student chose a site,
For me it was a seaside village we stopped in for lunch on one of our excursions. The idea was to
construct a house for the terminally ill, People who have come to good terms with the idea of
dying and who want to spend their last days in solitude. The project was extremely simple, a
small 2 room house, one room for sleeping and another for dwelling. The house itself is a huge
bulk of concrete with earth used as formwork to give it a very raw and heavy feeling, the
heaviness of being as opposed to the lightness of non-existing. Using the software ecotect, I
calculated the heat gains and performance of the building which turned out very good due to the
large cross section of the concrete walls of the house.

10. Master Design Studio: Climate Refuge City

For this semester I joined the Urban design Studio, The site was in Cottbus Germany. The task at
hand was to develop an old mining site on the fringes of Cottbus. The mining site was used for
mining lignite, what is called surface mining. Large expanses of land have been dug for 10 meters.
The common practice was to fill these large expanses of land with water turning them into lakes
in the hopes of encouraging tourisms, This was not the case as the water became extremely
polluted. Right next to the mining site was an electrical generation plant that operated on lignite.
As part one of my design which was done in groups of 2, we argued for a regional plan that
would connect the area to Berlin as part of a bigger trail leading from Berlin to Dresden with a
hiking and cycling trail that would take one week to complete. As part of the plan we were
looking at the bigger region and doing interventions on a much wider scale that was required of
us. For the second part which was done individually, I worked on the nearby electrical generation
plant to turn it into a water treatment plant. For the lignite mines, I looked into the possibility of
forestation with ancillary functions related to forestry, lumberjacking and fishing in order to offer
jobs for the now unemployed miners in the area. The level of design only reached the master
planning stage and was later shared with the Mayor of Cottbus for chances of implementation in
the future.

11. Erasmus Semester, Project Based Design at the Budapest University of Technology and
Economics
The design studio I did on my Erasmus exchange semester was rather easy going as usually is the
way on the Erasmus semester. The semester was divided into two parts with two projects with
different professors. The first of which was a design of a sports facility in Budapest that would be
included in the Budapest bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. In a park in Budapest we were
to do a master plan for a sports complex that would include Tennis Courts, Squash courts, a
boxing ring and a football stadium. We worked in groups of 3 on producing the master plan in
which our concept was to maintain the park the way it was and trying to work our way around
the already existing trees and interesting landscape details and preserve them. We later on went
to work individually to design specific buildings; I chose to do the squash courts. The complex
included two training courts and one glass court that would be used for the main events. For the
second part of the semester we worked on a housing project on the gellert Hill in Budapest. My
design was for a cantilevered housing strip that would wrap around the hill complementing the
citadel on top rather than competing with it. Each unit of the strip was arranged as a studio with
an open plan and included one bedroom, one living room, one bathroom, one study and a
kitchen. The unit’s area did not exceed 60 m 2 and it was set on different levels and mezzanines
offering a unique living experience.
12. Master Thesis Design Studio: Urban Design for Coexistence, São Paulo, Brazil. Schindler Global
Award 2017
For my thesis semester I chose to join the design theory studio, The theme I wanted to pursue
was ownership. It has been a theme that I have experienced many projects fail because of it and
wanted to integrate from the beginning of the design process. The studio project this year was to
be in Sao Paulo the site was CEAGESP a market place that serves not only Brazil but the whole of
South America. There were plans by the Brazilian government to move the market place to the
outskirts of Sao Paulo and redevelop the area. My design which was mostly research based
focused on how to cut up the plot in order to make it accessible financially to a wider range of
owners and stake holders. The main idea was to offer a wide range of sizes in plots, offer loans
and subsidize for some of the plots. This would ensure that not only the large real estate
companies would move into the plot. I then focused on specific areas of the plot to visualize the
mix that would emerge from such intervention. Another theme I experimented with was the idea
of flexible boundaries that would allow for ownership to be seasonal or even daily depending on
the wishes of the user. The design project was later submitted as an entry to the Schindler Global
Award as 2 A0 panels. The project was more of a Master planning for the area with focus on plot
allocation, accessibility, boundary and transportation.