Fishing Hub - Mersah

Alexandria University - Faculty of Fine Arts

Project idea

"The Marsa Matrouh Fishing Hub is a strategic architectural intervention designed to bridge the severe gap between the region's immense natural maritime potential and its current underutilized fish production. Located at the historic 'Fishermen's Marina' in Rommel Bay—a natural low-wave basin ideal for safe vessel mooring—the project addresses a critical food security and economic challenge. Currently, despite Matrouh's 460 km coastline, absence of comprehensive infrastructure leads to an informal market capturing 70% of the catch, stripping the governorate of its economic value-added. Through Adaptive Reuse, the existing old fish market is preserved as a cultural anchor and transformed into a dedicated fishermen’s service facility, seamlessly integrated with a new, state-of-the-art complex. Guided by a strict logistic and user-experience hierarchy, the design features a dual-zoning system split by a main longitudinal spine. The eastern sector optimizes industrial functions (auction hall, flash freezing, and ice production), while the western and north-western sectors maximize the public and tourist experience through retail fish markets and panoramic seafood restaurants and seatings by the sea as arab seating or puplic seatings . The entire waterfront facade utilizes dynamic self-shading geometries to filter intense late-afternoon solar radiation and harness the prevailing North-West sea breeze, achieving passive thermal comfort and eliminating the need for artificial shading devices

Project description

The project proposes a comprehensive fishing hub called Mersah, located along a Mediterranean coastal site. The design incorporates multiple programmatic zones including an entrance zone, auction hall, fishing service area, existing building integration, workers zone, fishing process facilities, fish market, restaurant, and entertainment zone. The concept derives from the abstraction of traditional fishing boat lines Project , Fishing Hub is an integrated marine, commercial, and tourism complex in Rommel Bay, engineered around a highly efficient operational lifecycle,The project features a strict bi-directional zoning system separated by a main longitudinal spine. The Eastern Sector handles wholesale logistics: seafood is unloaded at the loading docks, registered, and processed through sorting and flash-freezing zones before entering the central Auction Hall, which is positioned next to the main street for seamless vehicular transport. This industrial zone includes comprehensive worker facilities, administrative offices, and the site's original fish market transformed via Adaptive Reuse into a fishermen’s café and staging anchor. Conversely, the Western and North-Western Sectors serve the public and tourists. Wholesale catch is transferred through an isolated rear Service Circulation corridor to supply retail shops from behind, ensuring total cleanliness in the public market lanes where seafood is displayed on Volakas white marble counters. Visitors can exit directly, use the preparation zones, or dine at the panoramic Restaurant Zone. The restaurant operates on a dual-supply system, procuring local catch from the auction early in the morning and utilizing a hidden rear loading dock for regional imports, maintaining a strict linear back-of-house workflow

Technical information

The architectural framework is engineered on a dual structural and environmental logic. The retail, administrative, and worker zones utilize a modular to optimize spatial partitioning. In contrast, the central Auction Hall and zones of fishermans transitions into a long-span Steel Truss System to achieve a column-free, highly flexible layout for forklift and container logistics. Structurally, the project incorporates an Adaptive Reuse intervention, structurally retrofitting the old fish market into a fishermen's social anchor. Passive environmental design is embedded into the building's envelope through the North-West facade's Dynamic Self-Shading Geometries. These angular mass indentations serve as natural vertical fins that block late-afternoon solar radiation and glare, eliminating the need for external artificial louvers. Mechanically, these breaks act as aerodynamic wind deflectors that capture and filter high-velocity prevailing North-West sea breezes, driving indirect natural ventilation into the public zones. Hygiene and logistics are maintained through a strict Back-to-Back Circulation hierarchy, utilizing a dedicated service corridor behind the shops. All wet processing areas feature anti-bacterial epoxy flooring with a explicit 1.5 slope, routing fish-handling wastewater directly into an Eco-Friendly Industrial Drainage System equipped with stainless steel scale filters and grease traps, The Auction Hall: Multi-level stepped roof drives natural cross ventilation and stack effect; it draws cool northern breezes while flushing out hot air and odors without mechanical HVAC.
The Facade Geometry: Angled, fragmented walls act as structural vertical fins, providing self-shading and glare control for the restaurant while blocking harsh afternoon sun.
Architectural Self-Sufficiency: The aerodynamic massing channels pleasant north-western winds and provides passive cooling, completely eliminating the need for external shading device