Zaha Hadid Architects have won a competition to design Cairo Expo City in Cairo, Egypt.
The topography of the Nile valley is the inspiration behind the project’s fluid forms.
The project, located between the city centre and the airport, will provide a campus for exhibitions and conferences.
See also our earlier story on The Stone Towers in Cairo by Zaha Hadid Architects.
See all our stories about Zaha Hadid in our special category.
Here’s some info from the architects:
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ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS WIN CAIRO EXPO CITY COMPETITION
After presenting the design to Egyptian Prime Minister Dr. Ahmed Nazif, Zaha Hadid Architects was announced as architects of the new
Cairo Expo City. Zaha Hadid Architects will be designing Cairo Expo City together with global multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold.
The winning design for Cairo Expo City delivers a unique facility for Cairo – a 450,000 square metre, state of the art city for exhibitions and
conferences, located between the centre of Cairo and the city’s airport. The project comprises a major international exhibition and conference
centre with business hotel. A further office tower and a shopping centre are also proposed.
“This is a truly national project for Egypt.” said Sherif Salem, CEO of the GOIEF (General Organization of International Exhibitions and Fairs). “The current exhibition halls for Cairo do not meet the standards now required by the international conference and exhibition industry. With this exceptional design by Zaha Hadid Architects, Cairo will be among the world’s top cities for conferences and fairs, able to cater for the widest variety and size of events.”
The undulating fluid forms of the Cairo Expo City design were inspired by the natural topography of the Nile valley explained Zaha Hadid.
“As the exhibition spaces require the greatest degree of flexibility, we wanted to ensure that all the public spaces and formal composition of Cairo Expo City relate to the surrounding Egyptian landscape.” said Hadid. “Along the great rivers of the region, most particularly the Nile, there is a powerful dynamic – a constant flow between the water and the land – which extends to incorporate the neighboring buildings and landscapes. For the Cairo Expo City design, we worked to capture that seamlessness and fluidity in an urban architectural context.”
Carving and sculpting processes have been used to divide the very large exhibition and conference areas required for Cairo Expo City into clusters of individual buildings that have their own formal composition, yet each building relates to the overall design. A main north-south artery is carved through the design, with secondary streams converging at the centre to ease crowd traffic during event. The movement of people within these streams informs the building entrances on the site.
Zaha Hadid Architects was shortlisted with Norwegian architecture practice Snohetta for the second phase of the competition in April. Works will begin in October this year to clear the site.
Client: GOIEF (General Organization of International Exhibitions and Fairs), Cairo
Design: Zaha Hadid Architects
Engineering: Buro Happold, London
Quantity Surveyor: Gleeds, London
Traffic and Logistics: Buro Happold, London
Built Area: 450,000sqm (exhibition halls, conference centre and mixed-use areas)
Height of Towers: 33 and 31 storeys
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Posted by Marcus Fairs
June 9th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
same same but different
June 9th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Hmm, not a single air conditioner unit to be seen in the rendering. I like Hadid’s aesthetic but I have to wonder what the projects look like once utilities are hooked up.
I don’t want to sound negative though, this blog gets enough of that.
June 9th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Nice waves!
June 9th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
seems like this one made it out half cooked…
June 9th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
getting tired of al this whipped ceam…
June 9th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
AHHHH!!!!! make it STOP!!!!!
June 9th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
It’s whipped cream indeed!!! whipped cream, rhino and grasshopper – the LADY’s abusing of this diet lately. Does any of you is fed up with it as I am?…
June 9th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
”The topography of the Nile valley is the inspiration behind the project’s fluid forms.”???
Or ”Inspired by the movement of water, the designs are a formal expression of the continuous flow of liquid”
Previous time it was: ”Inspired by the patterns and textures of ancient Egyptian stonework”
Another one: ”The form draws inspiration from the organic shapes of a starfish.”
Another: “Kloris” is inspired by the shapes of flower petals.”
Then again: ”Taking inspiration from complex natural geometries such as flower petals and leaves”
Now try to find which one of all the fluid forms refers to a museum, a tap, a city, a handbag, a pavilion and a bench. It’s all in dezeen…
June 9th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Lol, whipped cream.
“The undulating fluid forms of the Cairo Expo City design were inspired by the natural topography of the Nile valley explained Zaha Hadid.”
^Ok, so everything she has done in the past few years was inspired by the Nile, then…?
I’d much rather she say: “The undulating fluid forms were not inspired by anything, this is kinda just what I do if you haven’t noticed.”
It’s a decent looking building. I like it more than her other recent stuff. There are so many buildings on earth that a few that look the same is not going to hurt. Her style makes people outside the world of design think about the practice, anyway.
I also like what she did with the footbridge or whatever that is.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
looks expensive, I’d like to see how it turns out after some value engineering, especially in a country that is struggling with their own poor economy.
Zaha’s buildings rarely seem to translate well to an actual built form.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:48 am
it takes a certain master barista to produce this whipped cream… notice the matcha swirls, and even the caramel bits that magically appear at night! the cinnamon sticks in the corner balances the whole ensemble together quite nicely
June 10th, 2009 at 2:30 am
Awesome. Uh, do these things actually get built?
June 10th, 2009 at 3:41 am
indeed…too much whipped cream, it´s giving me nausea!
June 10th, 2009 at 5:22 am
I have respect for Zaha’s style but her projects are looking repetitive. I wonder how many projects she’s got in that country? More than one = boring.
June 10th, 2009 at 6:28 am
What about some images from eye level?
That is, I assume, what most visitors will experience when visiting the site.
June 10th, 2009 at 7:01 am
GOOD concept ! a melting icecream reflecting hot cario!
June 10th, 2009 at 8:36 am
i’m keen to see more on how that amazingly slender unsupported bridge is structured…
hate to buck the trend and be cynical about Zahas work… but it looks too good to be true
June 10th, 2009 at 9:32 am
perfect!
June 10th, 2009 at 9:33 am
No guys its not whipped cream cream its meringue – even more sickly! The way to test that you have the perfect meringue is when it has firm peaks… maybe that explains the two towers.
But seriously, I know this is a expo building but apart from the very subtle surface undulations it is a huge shed…. so same old industrial estate typology then, just a bigger bill at the end.
And yes, why all of the those aerial views. It will NEVER be seen from these view points. Maybe ground level views would reveal the true nature of this thing.
Hate to be negative, but with so much ammunition it is difficult not to be!
Lets bring back the love….ZAHA!!!!!
June 10th, 2009 at 10:31 am
I wonder, does THE Zaha Hadid design all these ‘whipped cream’ structures or does her employees? How did she have the time to design all these extremely large projects?? There are some projects on this website that is mentioned as designed by “Zaha Hadid Architects”, such as this one, and there are ones that is labeled as designed by “Zaha Hadid”.. perhaps they denote WHO actually designed the project? Can a moderator confirm?
Wonder if this will get built. Not many of Hadid’s really fluid work has gone ahead to building.. many are just to idealistic I guess.. but the forms she and her employees come up with are simply inspirational.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Hey what s the the big deal with Zahas buildings looking the same , after all so do Mies, Corbusier and Michelangelo buildings. The question is wether it is a good building or not. Can t judge that without looking at the plans. Aesthetically it appears quite clumsy to me.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:35 am
“The topography of the Nile valley is the inspiration behind the project’s fluid forms” well, that and Maya…
June 10th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
i am really impressed by this particular concept….keep it up ZAHA
June 10th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
what happened with this once talented woman, it seems like every project she does it’s just a deformation of the same element, I know is HER STYLE and she sticks with it & there’s nothing wrong about it, but we have to admit that lately every project she does is the result of put into a blender the same project again and again.
June 10th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I wonder, does THE Zaha Hadid design all these ‘whipped cream’ structures or does her employees? How did she have the time to design all these extremely large projects??
her employees of course. architects working for an architect. that is how the architecture business works. she is a figurehead. makes adjustments here and there, general initial concept. but all executed by her staff. it’s fairly obvious isn’t?
June 10th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Guys, there is so much eye-hurting architecture in the world…Zaha’s stuff is for sure better than all these no-brainers our cities are full of, no matter how often she repeats it.
June 10th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
“Hey what s the the big deal with Zahas buildings looking the same , after all so do Mies, Corbusier and Michelangelo buildings.”
…err, no. I’d say that’s a little different. They may have similar palettes of materials, but they most all worked on vastly different levels given their contexts. These Zaha ideas being pumped out don’t even have a palette of materials. Just V-Ray white and glass. Excitinnng…
June 10th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I must admit the shapes are very sexy, but in the end such architecture becomes a gizmo, many of you have noticed the weakness of it’s post-rationalization. Post-rationalization is an important stage of an intuitive design method as such but it should punch in more solidly in an earlier design stage, so to actually inform the final result with some meaning. Saying that this project is inspired by the nile valley seems to refer only to it’s formal aspects but if it where to condition semantics, program, rituals, sense of place, then post-rationalization becomes the key passage of an intuitive design incipit.
June 10th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
a very expensive project to be executed in CAiro
June 10th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
just so you guys know, zaha hadid is the antichrist.
June 10th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
I like the towers.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
for those of you who are constantly whining about how technically impossible her design is, listen up:
1- The fact that you’re whining about this indicates that you do not have experience in working in a firm like Zaha’s or the likes. These images are for a competition entry, not photographs of the final design.
2- After an architect wins a competition, which is mostly an aspirational vision, then they bring in consultants etc. and put together a design team to make it happen, it’s a process, and many elements of the design evolve.
3- If you visited or saw pictures of her built work, ie. the museum in Volfsburg, or the expo bridge in Zaragosa, the quality of detailing and technical mastery is exquisite. And they still maintain that”technically impossible” canitlevers and structural gymnastics.
4- You might have a problem with her aesthetics, and be annoyed with the fact that many of her designs published here and there are self similar, but you need to realize that only a small percentage of competitions actually get built, and in many cases the reason why they do not get built is not because they’re technically impossible to execute, but the economy collapses, or the funding is ccut, or it was a developer trick to increase the vaue of the land to begin with so that they can sell it someone else, which, in fact has nothing to do with the whip cream look or the impossble looking bridge going to nowhere in the rendering.
June 11th, 2009 at 5:05 am
well said Ali
i personally love Zaha’s style and i wont get sick of her designs anytime soon. We all know its a style that is instantly recognisable and could almost be called a brand. It does not mean she is creatively limited. I aspire to design buildings like Zaha one day and im sure there are many out there who do also
June 11th, 2009 at 5:07 am
“her employees of course. architects working for an architect. that is how the architecture business works. she is a figurehead. makes adjustments here and there, general initial concept. but all executed by her staff. it’s fairly obvious isn’t?”
Well, yes. So that means the one and only Zaha Hadid don’t take part in the design process of some of the projects.. her architects are the one who effectively did the design. I question if she even has a large influence over projects her firm designs. Anyway, my question was if this was a design purely by Hadid herself or a mere representation of Hadid’s aesthetic, stamped by the firm’s brand and called a ‘Zaha Hadid building’. It may be compared to established luxury fashion brands like Vuitton, etc.; a branding and not designed. What I want to know is has architecture become this commercialised industry? I’m sure Zaha Hadid is still an inspirational architect, but is it because of her high profile in the commercial world that many people are deluded into thinking the designs her firm does are all her work, when it is simply stamped by her name as a brand?
I’m not saying this is the case at all, I am asking IF this is the case.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Thanks for the Archi 101 lesson Ali
. Its like globalisation.. advert-architecture. Practised best by the Americans normally.
However I do also feel this scheme is under-articulated even for a comp.
And I also have a lack of patience for achitects maintaining a rigid style – even with fluid forms
Anyway, theres not much in this scheme…
Lets see the Snohetta entry!
June 12th, 2009 at 3:31 am
once again, hadid’s work completely ignores the surrounding context…and human scale…
if these concepts are actually built, i bet you in 30 years time they’ll be outdated blots on the landscape…
June 12th, 2009 at 6:09 am
I know Zaha Hadid is THE architect people love to hate on this and other architectural sites, but what can I say, I usually really enjoy her work. Flowiness and all.
For me it’s a welcomed relief from the decades of the endless rectangular Seagram Building clones.
Sorry. I never me a curvature i didn’t like.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:05 am
truly national project for Egypt.
it maybe a very expensive project.
June 12th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Love it Z-Dog!
The ripple in the glass exterior <3
June 14th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Okay I know all of you are sick of this from the first impression but go look at it again and look at how organic it is and how nice the landscape is designed.
PS: no matter what anyone says. The concept is sand dunes or the accumulation of sand….Look at the base of the towers.
Cheerios
June 15th, 2009 at 4:38 am
usually her surface texture is interesting but i dont blame ZH for the whipped cream look. if cairo is like a desert then white is appropriate while the smooth curves taoilors the surrounding wind like a desert oasis. this work does not impress me as much her other recent style but design and style are apart.
June 15th, 2009 at 4:39 am
oh! and i quite like the two tall buildings though.
June 17th, 2009 at 4:51 am
i thing we need these kind of projects, concepts, main lines in our countries, Nice.
June 17th, 2009 at 10:19 am
As many said before, it’s too much of the same with Zaha; It would be great if she challenged herself a little bit!
June 17th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I’VE GOT DIABETES! !
June 17th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
it starts to be boring, all the archietctures of archistars are the same, fluid forms and shapes. sometimes they are of on the right place at the right moment, sometimes so striking with the landscape.
have they ever heard about GENIUS LOCI?? Latin studies are important for everything!
June 17th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I am not sure that Zaha Hadid is a great architect, but I am sure that she is a great artist.
June 17th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Please zaha , learn from gehry care and defend your project until the end, use catia ,to make real your visions, because from the drawings to reality we lost always the best.
June 17th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Zaha hadid’s style is going down, want to see some new ideas form new architects, want to see a new invention, not old liquid form which is olready out of date.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Confectionary or Architecture?
June 18th, 2009 at 8:06 am
I am really so drunk this morning?! Oh God!
June 18th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Well…. some comments are abviously unfair and are about Zaha Hadid personality not about the subject project, which are not professionally posted.
those who think that zaha is repeating herself and that the ideas are not her ideas, I assure you that there is no single line in a single sheet shows up from Zaha’s office is not aproved by her. You can see her personal sketches, it is even more radical than this project.
however, and due to economic situation in egypt, I would luv a project from zaha that mix her madness and radical brain with egypt’s shining history. If she takes some time, I am sure she can make the 8th wonder in egypt.
architecture is a process of subsequent visions, you can’t stick to one vision, but to move to the next one, that is why space-time is not applied to fine arts for example.
go zaha, we luv ur anti- traditions madness.
June 18th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
i wrote the following comments on design boom blog earlier in the month, when i came across pictures of the project on their site, i just felt it was easier to visualize being there, the eco bit of my comment is just about materials, just some ideas i had when i saw the images:
“I was looking at pictures of this earlier today, it seems so vast, there are areas of it which I love – the dynamics – images 2, 5, 7 & 8 – I can imagine walking there and the space feeling quite remarkable. I have yet to read about the materials in terms of meeting environmental sustainability concerns plus labour concerns but if these things can be sorted out in a good way, it could be a very amazing place. Personally I think i would like listen to concerts of world music there, the acoustics could be amazing? (I don’t know about acoustics and structure).”
http://www.designboom.com
June 19th, 2009 at 3:50 am
Architecture? not measurement? not details? i want to see more and more………….
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:24 pm
for those people talking about whipped cream , such navigating in these fluid spaces & plazas and all those curvilinear leveled scapes is so interesting.
& for those people talking about poor economy struggle i think our gov. is capable to push the limits for such unique projects
June 26th, 2009 at 7:37 am
beautiful…. as usual.
good job!
June 30th, 2009 at 12:47 am
ali , are or were you working for zaha? maybe it’s patrik’s problem right? haha… just kidding
August 28th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Not only admirable architecture but exceptional viz job as well! She seems to have a good viz team behind her. As a concept artist, I’m often put off when a potentially good architectural concept project is spoiled by cheap or old-fashioned visualization – either by people not wanting to invest (or even not knowing what quality can be achieved today) in viz or even worse, by architects being old-fashioned when it comes to graphics and with their minds being still in the ’60s of the previous century… Minimalistic in architecture might be ok but minimalism in visualizations is definitely not in anymore – people today want to see the concept in all its photo-realistic quality, not some funny, abstract graphics!
September 30th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
ohhhhhhhhhhh common men ….. where are you living …. what are you saying …what do you know about future design or architecture …..what happen to youre conscience … turn on youre brains …look to future ..soooooo what do you see .. i dont know .. how can you dare talk about zaha hadid … some one who is always wining the competition…a genius architect .. zaha hadid is zaha hadid never chenge and never loose
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