Project story · Aswan, Egypt
Where heavy industry makes room for people
In the Aswan mountains, NEBU plans a gold mine, a processing plant and a residential compound so that machines and people keep out of each other's way.
By byJOOM · NEBU · Industrial and research
A working landscape
NEBU is a gold mine and processing plant with its offices and residential compound. It is for the people who run a major mining operation: an open pit, a processing plant, technical and administrative buildings, workshops, and a separate residential compound with courtyards, a sports pitch and shaded places to meet. The setting is the mountains, and the design takes them seriously.
A masterplan that follows the contours
The masterplan follows the contours of the mountains and separates heavy traffic from people on foot. This is the organising idea of the scheme. On a site where haul roads, conveyors and pipe racks share the ground with offices and homes, the first decision is who goes where, and the plan answers it by keeping the two worlds apart.
One language for the machinery
Steel-framed structures, conveyors, tanks and pipe racks share one consistent detailing. In the pictures the process area, with its pipes, clarifier and main conveyor, reads as a single designed thing rather than a collection of parts. The open pit lies beyond. Order here is not decoration; it makes the plant serviceable and easy to read.
Timber, shade and planting where people are
The buildings that people use are given timber screens, shade and planting. Offices sit against the processing structures but are set in a different material world, warm and screened. In the residential compound, buildings, shaded seating and planting surround a courtyard and a sports pitch.
Robust, serviceable structures for the desert, and a layout that can be extended as the mine develops.
A separate place to live
The residential compound is separate. It has courtyards, a pitch and shaded places to meet, so that the place where people rest has a different character from the place where they work. The pictures show it as a quiet group of low buildings under the mountains.
Robust and extensible
Robust, serviceable structures for the desert, and a layout that can be extended as the mine develops. A mine changes over time, and the plan is designed to grow without losing its order.
