New Cairo Architects
The following material were extracted from the AUC official website.
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By mid-2001, that team was in place. Sasaki and Abdel-Halim CDC would design the university’s three schools and adjacent structures. Three other firms, all with strong prior university experience, received commissions for the remaining campus buildings: Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer & Associates (USA) would design the library; Legorreta + Legorreta (Mexico) received the commission for the campus center and student residences; and Ellerbe-Beckett (USA) was assigned the indoor and outdoor athletic complex. Landscape design went to Carol R. Johnson & Associates of Boston, in association with Sites International of Cairo
Beyond the garden, the landscaping of the urban upper campus and the campus periphery are also important to the university’s environmental education mission. Maher Stino of Sites International created a “catalogue of all the plants on the campus for future use by the community and in the classroom,” he said.
“We chose trees and shrubs not only for their appropriateness to the climate, variety of color and aroma,” Stino said, but also for their productivity, as “many bear fruit and nuts.” The landscape as a whole is an environmental showcase for things Egyptian and a major part of AUC’s effort to demonstrate ecological leadership in the sustainable use of air, soil, stone and water. All trees and plants across the campus, except the date palms, were propagated and grown at AUC’s own Desert Development Center’s agricultural research station.
“Every landscape decision was made with a limited water budget in mind,” said Christopher Jones, executive vice president of Carol R. Jones and Associates. “All the landscape water used in the fountains and pools across the campus is moving, and it is all recycled.” Even evaporated water is not wasted, he said, “it plays a key role in cooling the campus.”
The garden will also play a central role in AUC’s future growth. While the AUC New Cairo is designed to accommodate a 10 percent increase in student population to 5,500 soon, long-range plans for the site could allow AUC to double in size in the decades ahead. If and as that happens, the land north of the garden is sufficient to accommodate the expansion and the garden would become a future unifying centerpiece between the two built areas.REED FULL ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE