The Cheops Observatory
Architect: Malka Architecture
Localization: Giza Pyramids Plateau, Egypt
Words by Malka Architecture
Located on the plateau of the Giza Necropolis, the project is nestled in the village of Nazlet El Samman. This ancient site was founded in the 7th century by desert tribes fascinated by the Pyramids; the village is a preserved site, a whole journey through time, and the common transport is still horse or camel ride.
The Cheops Observatory is also an artist’s residence, a gateway at the entrance of the desert, an inhabited belvedere at walking distance of the largest of the pyramids of the Giza plateau.
“Local construction techniques and ancestral savoir-faire and crafts of the villagers are an essential part of the project, with a social and environmental commitment. ”
The agency worked on a systemic approach to Informal Architecture, on which an intervention was necessary for the safeguarding, preservation, and extension of the historical heritage. According to centuries-old oral traditions, the residence was built orally, without any plan, just a few sketches drawn on the desert sand.
Local construction techniques and ancestral savoir-faire and crafts of the villagers are an essential part of the project, with a social and environmental commitment.
Materials are upcycled, diverted, and reused in a short circuit; The facades are made up of an accumulation of raw earth bricks, recycled traditional windows, and shutters coming from the circular economy of the village. Part of the crowning consists of a triangular tent handcrafted by an ancestral tribe living in the Giza desert.
A vertical stratification inscribes this architecture in a temporal process linking the vernacular, the contemporary, and the nomad in one main building.
The Observatory was built in alignment with the pyramid of Khufu, the oldest, largest, and only one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world still existing today.
The building has an East-West orientation, which gives it an optimal position to contemplate the trajectories of the sun and the moon in their greatest course possible. This exceptional situation allows to examine the relationship of the Pyramid to the North Star, the precession of the equinoxes amongst others.
Those relations create an architectural and landscape composition with logical continuities and concordances of views while opening powerful perspectives towards the pyramid from the garden, the swimming pool, the time room, and even on the reflections of the furniture.
The Cheops Observatory is both open and closed, nomad and sedentary, erectile and matricial construction. Back to the basics of Architecture, the Observatory creates a dialogue between local vernacular architecture and an architectural ready-made, an answer to the necessary mutation of informal architecture, one of the fundamental issues of 21st-century ecology.
Source: www.stephanemalka.com
