Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

El Gouna Hotel Resort / Michael Seagraves Architects

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

- 13 May 2015
- Edwin Seda
Africana , Contemporary African Directory , Modern Africana , Selected Works , Conservation Architecture , Resorts , Luxury , Hotels ,

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.

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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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SELECTED WORKS

- Butaro Hospital/ MASS Design Group
- 21 Apr 2015
In January 2011, the Rwandan Ministry of Health and Partners In Health (PIH) opened the 140-bed Butaro Hospital in the Burera District of...
- Hotel Sahrai / Christophe Pillet
- 29 Mar 2017
The five-star Hotel Sahrai, designed by the architect and designer Christophe Pillet, enjoys spectacular views of the largest medina in t...
- Alara Concept Store / Adjaye Associates
- 24 Nov 2015
Alara Concept Store is perhaps West Africa's first signature and lifestyle store, a concept store made specifically for its products in ...

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIRECTORY

- Highveld Pavilion / Studio Mas
- 06 May 2015
Instigated in a highly contemporary environment, the Highveld pavillion is reminiscent of a Mies van der Rohe structure, touched and orda...
- Sinthian Thread Arts Cultural Centre / Toshiko Mori Architect TMA
- 29 Sep 2015
The design of the Sinthian Cultural Centre is described as a parametric transformation of the traditional pitched roof, which is literary...
- Dalton House / Alberto Morell Sixto
- 19 Jul 2016
Sometimes architecture is as simple as a sigh, yet portent like the cause of the sigh. It takes a particular process, an integral compoun...