• El Gouna Hotel Resort / Michael Seagraves Architects

Architects: Michael Graves Architects  
Location: Red Sea,  Egypt
Project Year: 2007
Photographer: Michael Seagraves Architects

Hassan Fathy would be proud standing on one side of the red sea and glaring into the yonder, eyes fixed on the red adobe architecture replication of his ideas into the El Gouna Hotel resort in Egypt’s hot and humid air. It is a oxymoron idea into architecture, using locally affordable materials and technology to create a luxurious environment for the well-heeled, trying to adopt a cultural and significantly pithy idea onto the Egyptian landscape.

 El Gouna Hotel Resort / Michael Seagraves Architects

The luxurious Steigenberger Golf Resort expresses a mixture of modern architecture while respecting regional traditions, both styles of architecture and technology.

El Gouna Hotel Resort / Michael Seagraves Architects

It does well to adopt an Arabic feel to it, without leaning too heavily on any specific tenets, simply adopting the style and rolling with it into an up-to-date feel to the entire complex.

 El Gouna Hotel Resort / Michael Seagraves Architects

The hotel grounds overlook the championship golf course, lagoons, pool and lush gardens. The distinctive interiors of the spa feature Turkish baths, mosaic-tile pools, within a series of vaulted spaces lit from above through clerestory windows. The restaurant and bar are located in an adjacent pyramid-shaped building offering awe-inspiring views of the golf course and the Red Sea.

 El Gouna Hotel Resort / Michael Seagraves Architects

The careful combination of bright and dimmed hues of earth simply embellishes the design in light and the careful juxtaposition of incorrigible forms and shapes traverse across the complex like a spate of carefully throughout executions, a good attempt towards maintaining a degree of purity and saturation of control. 

  • Halawa House / Abdel Wahed El-Wakil

  • The Halawa House presupposes the notion of a contemporary idea within a setting that is way past its own time. Wahed El Wakil says the house is conspicuously different, both in design and materials, from what is normal in Agami. And that is no Sin. This house is an idea whose sole discretion l...

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