assistant: Berardo Metalluci
students: Anastasia Fragkoudi
The subject of the research studio of the 2nd term of the master’s program was the design of a building of 10.000 people that each student would decide its use and location. The project had to be based on the issue of sustainability in all of its forms: social, economical and energetic.
The location of the project is Makkah, one of the bigger cities of Saudi Arabia and the most important religious place of Islam. Muslims revere the city for containing the holiest site of Islam, the Masjid Al-Haram (The Sacred Mosque) of Makkah. A pilgrimage to Makkah during the week of the Hajj is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.
The primary industry in Makkah in modern times is to support the annual pilgrimage of the Hajj, as well as to support the pilgrims who visit the city at all other times of the year. More than 2 million pilgrims annually head to Makkah for once in a lifetime ceremony. Saudi Arabia’s government has been criticized on the lack of services, accommodation and infrastructure provision. In our days many projects are under construction in Makkah since Saudi Arabia government planners in 2001 have approved the multi-billion dollar construction to more than double the number of pilgrims who can be accommodated around the immediate area of the Grand Mosque. Makkah is one of the few locations around the earth where a 10.000 people building has a purpose of being constructed.
A building designed to accommodate 10.000 people needs almost all the facilities of an urban environment. The basic element of the building is the residential section since it is designed to accommodate pilgrims that visit Makkah throughout the year. There are 3 bedroom categories: for one or two people (20 sq.m. unit), for three or four people (40 sq.m. unit) and for four or five people (60 sq.m. unit). Facilities provided for 10.000 people should include commercial spaces, service areas, open spaces and basically all the facilities that are part of the Islamic religion; meaning baths and swimming pools as well as areas that are dedicated only to prayer.
The spatial organization of the building is based on a circular pattern. The core of the building is the circulation. Around it commercial areas, service areas, open spaces and leisure activities are organized in the form of a circle. Religious areas and the residential cores are placed on the periphery of this volume in order to have more privacy.
The building is comprised by components. Each of the component “groups” the uses and facilities of the building forming zones of spaces with specific metric attributes. The components are embodying both the infrastructure of the building and the organization of the uses. The building consists of 124 floors and its overall height is 372 m. The uses are distributed in the whole volume instead of being gathered in specific areas. Every floor has a different percentage of each main use according to the sq.m. that it occupies each time.
Electric energy as well as the heating and cooling of the building are provided through geothermal energy. Electricity is produced through the "hot dry rock" geothermal process; first, high-pressure water in pumped to underground rocks and breaks them up, then water is pumped from the surface down through the broken hot rocks. When the water heats up, it is brought back to the surface through a second well and used to drive turbines for electricity. The grey water of the building after being treated in order to be pure and not pollute the underground environment could provide the water needed for the specific geothermal energy process.
For the heating and cooling of the building a geothermal heat pump system is used. The system operates based on the stability of underground temperatures; the ground a few feet below surface has a very stable temperature throughout the year, depending upon location's annual climate. A geothermal heat pump uses that available heat in the winter and puts heat back into the ground in the summer. A geothermal heat pump is a heat pump that uses the Earth as either a heat source, when operating in heating mode, or a heat sink, when operating in cooling mode.
The infrastructure of the whole building is organized in parts. There are four main components that embody both the structure and the infrastructure of the building organized vertically and horizontally. Vertically infrastructures are separated forming autonomous fields of “flow” transfer while horizontally infrastructures are mixed forming levels of “flow” networks. These four components follow a specific pattern of organization into space in order to ensure a constant infrastructure “flow” working in the form of a natural cycle. Component A is in the center of the cycle, six B components are attached to component A in such way that they can share only one vertical infrastructure “flow” while these six B components share two other vertical infrastructure “flows” in the form of a cycle. Components C and D are organized on the periphery of that cycle sharing only one vertical infrastructure “flow” depending on their position into space. Components C and D can also operate as individual separated units in terms of water infrastructure since they have two more vertical infrastructure “flows” that allow them to recycle grey water into their own unit; grey water is recycled on the bottom of the components and is pumped up on the top and distributed again through an additional vertical infrastructure water “flow”. In the horizontal axis all components share the same level of “flow” networks operating together.
The design of the building depends on the components. By piling up the component of the circulation the “movement” core of the building is generated. The commercial and service area components, six in number, are organized circularly around the circulation core following a rotation of 60o degrees from the centre of the volume. The residential area and the religious area components are attached in one side to the commercial and service area components staying in the periphery of the main core of the building. The structure piles up until it reaches 372 meters in height to serve the accommodational needs of the pilgrims.
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