344 / Wael Marawi: Hoyamal, A Marine Cultural City
Wael Marawi from Syria: “Wael Marawi is an enthusiastic and creative individual interested in the different disciplines of design and research related to architecture, urban design, building technology, BIM, and the built environment. Wael is a fresh graduate who holds a degree in architecture from Abu Dhabi University in UAE. He is very passionate about parametric and modular design plus the use of technology and the different software designing programs. He has also worked on a number of projects of different scales and types, and participated in national and international design competitions. He is also keen about the future of sustainable design and its consequences on the industry as well as on the communities. Wael always aimed on achieving his dreams of providing a better quality of life for the people and the environment by taking into consideration the history, the culture, and the context throughout all his designs.”
University: Abu Dhabi University
Professor(s): Dr. Magdy Ibrahim
Instagram Username: @wael.m96
Name of Project: Hoyamal: A Marine Cultural City
Project Description: The project is a marine cultural city which includes different sea related functions and activities inspired by the long history of the UAE with the marine life. The main components of the project are a maritime museum, an aquarium, a research center, an edutainment center, and a fishing academy. It also includes an auditorium, laboratories, classrooms, and workshops. The project is designed to have five different buildings for different functions. It is located in Mina Zayed area and is connecting two sides of the land with some of the volumes floating on the sea surface connected by a number of bridges. The main access to the building is a ramp through a shaded courtyard on the basement level. The most convenient way for visitors to go back to the first building was to design a cable car track that is supported on the floating masses to be used as a shortcut. The aquarium has a cylindrical shape with a circular ramp so the visitors can flow around it to see it completely and move to the higher level. A journey through past and future:
— Cultural Identity: The galleries will start by showing the old and traditional exhibits of Abu Dhabi like the traditional dhows, fish skeletons, and the old fishing and pearling methods.
— Gradual Floor Levels: The project will be comprised of multiple masses. Each mass will have a different height, and they are connected through bridges.
— Circulation: The circulation in the building will be a journey-like one, moving through gallery sections from an era to another to reach the modern times at the end.
— Innovation: The design studies the possibilities of having floating structures and how to connect them to two sides of the land.
— Modularity: The whole project is designed according to a cubic basic modular unit, which can be seen in the plan, the top view, the structure, the facade, the shading roof, and the landscape.
— Sustainability: The project includes a huge courtyard to allow the natural light from all sides. A parametric shading canopy is covering the building to minimize the heat and the direct sunlight. The façade of the buildings is covered with shading screens.
— Use of Technology: Technology can be found in the use of hologram and high-tech futuristic exhibitions. It can also be seen through the dependence on the cable car as an innovative mode of transport.
