PORT SAID OPERA HOUSE, Seven Stories of One Folk

Project idea

This project is an opera house and cultural center that celebrates the multiple, diverse cultural identities that coexist within Egypt. It rejects the colonial notion that Egyptian identity is solely Pharaonic, affirming instead that Egypt’s true identity is made of many threads—Fellahi, Saadi, Nubian, Bedouin, Berber, Mediterranean, and more—each of which remains an integral part of who Egypt is today. The project location is in Port Said because of the city's cosmopolitan history; as the first city on the Suez canal, it has always been Egypt's gate to the world from the Mediterranean, therefore it was an optimum location to design a project that reflects who Egypt is. The opera house aims to show the real Egyptian identity through the universal language: Art.

Project description

Through studying the folklore of each part of Egypt, the identities were categorized into 7 according to location and cultures. Each identity has its own dedicated theater, with an exhibition underneath the theater to show the history of the culture. The 7 theaters are: Western desert theater, Alexandrian theater, Delta theater, Suez Canal cities theater, Saadi (Upper Egypt) theater, Nubian theater, and Bedouin theater. These 7 small theaters represent the diversity. There is also one big concert hall and one big performance hall at the edges of the project, they represent the unity in Egyptian identity.

Technical information

The building consists of 7 small theaters that each has 150 person capacity, and one concert hall with 1800 person capacity and a performance hall with 1200 person capacity. The seven theaters are covered with a double skin structure that has a pattern design inspired from the respective culture of the theater. The double skin also serves an environmental purpose, by creating an air flow from low to high pressure, creating a constant flow of cool air around the pods. Five of the small theaters are in floating pods in the space, these floating pods are created of prefabricated steel units that are assembled on site, the are connected to shear walls that transmit their load to the ground through horizontal steel beams connected to a ring steel beam. Tubes are designed around the horizontal steel beams, creating the entrance to the pods. The rest of the building has steel beam and column structure systems, with space trusses structure system for the large opera halls.