Nour El Houda Moussa – A Third Year Student at ARCHIDES- Wins First Place in an Architectural Diagrams International Workshop

Organized by the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, the international one-day workshop was meant to engage and train second and third year students in diagramming the ideas of a project. The objectives of the workshop are to understand the logic of graphic communication, to construct diagrams, and to explain clearly and easily a project through this vehicle.

Applications to the workshop were accepted based on the applicants’ portfolio. Four of our third year students were accepted, namely: Rabih Bitar, Manal Darwish, Mariam Khodor, and Nour el Houda Moussa. There were a limited number of seats – sixty in total. Applicants were from different part of the world.

The project site is located in Cairo – the intervention being on the renowned Tahrir Square.

Nour’s team was composed of two additional members, the first from Egypt and the second from Indonesia. Selection of the winner was based on a two-tier process: the first one was based on voting by the participating teams that led to the selection of three candidate projects. The second was based on voting by the public where these three entries were posted on Instagram.

Nour’s winning scheme is based on transforming the Tahrir Square roundabout into multi-layered public functions both indoor and outdoor: starting with an enclosed exhibition topped by a garden centered with an amphitheater for public performance and an ascending walkway that opens up the views and the horizon of the visitors all across the Nile. Political undertones of captivity and freedom permeated their design as well. Nour’s project collected almost 1.5k likes on Social Media and won her the first place.