BIDAYA – Recycling Hub

Al-Zabbaleen district, where the project site is located, is considered the best international location given its high potential. This district handles large quantities of waste from almost the country and its residents have solid experience in waste management and recycling process. The presence of a recycling hub at this site is considered a strong support base in the area of community development.

The community of Al-Zabbaleen lacks the preliminary requirements for well living and has great potential in the recycling field but it needs guidance to develop itself and make a change in its surroundings. After a deep studying of the new typology architecture and understanding the process of waste management and the definition of the site, Al-Zabbaleen district is considered as a largest informal recycling hub, which is an attractive organization to discover and study.

Despite all of these, Al-Zabbaleen District misses a lot of technological, economic, social facilities, suffers from poverty, disease and lack of awareness. So, this district becomes a poor weak organization. Because of neglecting this area and disappearing the attractive urban spaces, it turns into a forgettable land.

This project aims to support the residents of Al-Zabbaleen district, root their original work to strengthen their role in the country, save their identity and create it as an attractive urban space. So the project’s objectives are to:

– Create a new project typology that works on the main concept.

– Raise awareness of the environmentally safe ways of the recycling processes through NGOs office and lectures, seminars, galleries, workshops and different kinds of exhibitions.

– Develop their skills and how to use the modern technology in recycling processes through making qualified workshops zone.

– Define the identity of the site by the history, timeline and the researches of the site.

– Support their products from recycle or reuse by modern local flea market and permanent and temporary galleries and exhibitions.

– Make the project as a green lung to this site through the main piazzas, the accessible roofs and the courtyards.

There is a relation between the project and the surrounding urban context that manifests itself through the morphology of the masses and the in-between spaces. The project have 4 main zones representing thinking and development process, recycling process, production process and commercial process.

The first zone is Management and Research Centre which deal with materials and the business clients first, it’s mainly educational zone has seminar halls, offices, multipurpose unit and interactive spaces. The second zone is the Recycling Centre, it’s mainly educational training zone has five different workshops in the ground floor and seminar halls, training rooms and multipurpose unit  in the rest higher floors which can be found in higher floors looking at Salah Al-Din Ayoubi Castle. The third zone is Production Center and it’s mainly industrial-training zone depend on some different kinds of production workshops on many scales and for all ages. And finally the Commercial Centre which tell a story about the place by its different products, it depends on the flea markets and other markets, food court, galleries and exhibitions.