Dual Lungs

Mohamed Noeman

Project idea

The project starts from the current reality of El Tarif, where alabaster carving is not separated from daily life, but happens inside and around family homes. The house becomes a workshop, a storage space, a selling point, and sometimes even a tourist stop. This creates a very problematic condition: fine alabaster dust spreads through living spaces, waste accumulates in streets and around houses, working areas become tight and unhealthy, and family privacy is constantly exposed.

The danger is not only temporary discomfort. Continuous dust exposure can create long-term and sometimes irreversible health impacts for workers and families, especially because the same spaces used for carving are also used for sleeping, eating, and raising children. At the same time, this craft cannot simply be removed from the village, because for many families it is their main source of income and a major part of Luxor’s souvenir and tourism economy.

The idea of the project is therefore not to relocate the craft, but to reorganize it safely within its original context. The proposal creates an environmental buffer between production and housing, using carving chimneys, shaded work courts, waste-management walls, vegetation, controlled entrances, and cleaner housing courtyards.

Through this system, dusty carving processes are moved out of the home and into controlled environmental chimneys, while the houses remain connected to the craft through safer circulation, separate worker and family entrances, and wash points. At the same time, tourist carving shops, outdoor exhibitions, bazaars, and cultural courts transform alabaster from a hidden domestic burden into a visible cultural and economic experience.

Overall, the project protects the people without killing their craft. It turns El Tarif from an informal, polluted production area into a climate-responsive workshop–housing interface that reduces dust, manages waste, preserves income, protects family life, and gives the alabaster craft a stronger cultural and global presence.

Project description

The project proposes a new workshop–housing interface for El Tarif, Luxor, where alabaster production, family life, tourism, and cultural memory are reorganized into one safer system. Instead of allowing carving to continue inside homes, the project creates controlled production zones around environmental chimneys, while the houses are protected through courtyards, thermal cores, separate entrances, and dust-control points.

The project is organized around a sequence of spaces. The dusty carving process is moved into chimney-based workshops, where air movement, wet scrubbing, and dust collection help control pollution. Around these chimneys, shaded courts create safer work areas and shared gathering spaces. Housing clusters remain close to the craft, but are no longer directly exposed to dust and waste.

A public touristic spine connects the project to visitors through carving shops, outdoor exhibitions, bazaars, restaurants, and interactive red walls. Tourists can watch, carve, polish, and display alabaster without entering private homes. This transforms the craft from a hidden domestic activity into a public cultural experience.

The project also introduces two types of red interactive walls. One wall supports the tourist experience, where polished alabaster pieces are placed in drying pockets and become part of an outdoor exhibition. The other wall works as a waste-management system, where workers deposit alabaster waste during the day, and forklifts collect it at the end of the cycle.

Culturally, the open courts are designed to support both daily use and special events. During the Abu El Haggag Moulid, the space can host Tahtib, Mizmar, the Moulid swing, and the symbolic holy ship, turning the project into a place of ritual, celebration, and collective memory.

Overall, the project reorganizes the craft, filters its harmful effects, protects domestic life, and gives alabaster production a stronger architectural, environmental, and global identity.

Technical information

The main technical element of the project is the environmental carving chimney. It works as a ventilation and dust-control device for the carving space. The chimney is built with local pottery units and a thick earthen construction logic, giving it thermal mass and a strong connection to local material culture. Its perforated body allows air to pass through, while reducing heat inside the working area.

The chimney openings are designed with a conical form to create a Venturi effect. As air passes through the narrowed openings, its speed increases, helping to pull alabaster dust away from the worker and direct it toward the wet scrubbing wall and dust basin. The wet scrubbing wall captures dust particles using water, while the basin collects the remaining dust and residue before it spreads to the surrounding homes.

The collected alkaline solution water from the scrubbing wall is reused rather than wasted. It is gathered at the chimney base and redirected through a red piping network to drip-irrigate alkaline-tolerant tamarix trees around the chimney. This creates a closed-loop environmental system that connects dust control, water reuse, and landscape resilience.

The red sail-like canopies act as passive climatic devices. In normal conditions, the project benefits from the prevailing wind direction. On exceptional days when wind does not come from the optimum direction, the canopies help deflect airflow toward the chimney, creating small controlled fluctuations before the air stabilizes and enters the ventilation system.

The housing units use a rammed-earth thermal core that passes through the house to improve thermal comfort by day and night. The homes also include shaded courtyards, small openings near the chimney side, separate entrances for workers and families, and a wash point near the worker entrance to keep the domestic zone dust-free.

Waste is managed through a daily collection system. Workers place alabaster waste into designated red waste walls during the day, and forklifts collect it at the end of the working cycle. This prevents random waste accumulation in streets and around homes, while allowing the material to enter a controlled reuse process.

Together, these systems combine passive ventilation, wet dust filtration, water reuse, thermal mass, vegetation buffering, separated circulation, and organized waste collection to create a safer and more climate-responsive model for alabaster production in El Tarif.