The Nile Walkway - A Living Pedestrian Bridge Over The Nile
The Rifat Chadirji Prize 2020 - Tamayouz Excellence Award Competition Entry
A Pedestrian Bridge over the Nile
Location: Cairo, Egypt
Project By: Ayman M Ismail & Aya Mostafa
Location: Cairo, Egypt
Project By: Ayman M Ismail & Aya Mostafa
The A2 Team
The River Nile is a tale through Life. A walk along the bridge is a journey through space, time and geography. It’s the story of a place and the sense of a space. The journey begins with the geography of the Great Victoria falls in the eastern plaza. Here, you’ll find the Great Nile Tale Museum متحف المحكى, the iconic star attraction of the plaza and project, with its entrance mysteriously hidden among the artificial waterfalls. In that plaza is the landmark meeting point at the vista of the bridge with several activities along two axial paths from the two main entrances.
The second prominent attraction is the Nile Activism Center, a focal point for all NGOs and initiatives that promote the Clean Nile Act. A meeting place with spaces for promotion activities and media. The plaza is the pedestrian traffic source that get streamed along the 4 paths representing the branches of the Nile in reality. The first is the bike trail, the second is the emergency and service route and the other two are for the pedestrian’s activities.
Layout
Inspiration digrams
Once on the bridge, the scenic journey begins with multi-sensory experiences. Each section of the bridge is encouraged with plants odors and landscape representing the countries and bio-life of the Nile from Tanzania to Uganda to South Sudan to Nubia to Egypt and ending up with the Delta and Mediterranean at The paths intertwine and cross to pass by different attraction points. These include the fishing pods decks, observation decks protected kids’ areas and snack shops serving traditional bridge culture of Cairo. Emergency and security service points are well marked and spaced along the bridge. The journey eventually ends along the opposite side representing the branched delta and landing in the Mediterranean where the main piers for boats and sails are located.
Bridge activities
The structure system is very unique. A gigantic ribbon-shaped concrete curve twist and lifts the bridge’s platform along 3 segments. Tthe segments are carried by two submerged foundations that fix the arched ribbon to both suspend and carry the platform along i the way it integrates with the life of its people and place in a sort of a DNA bond of suspension cables.
Gigantic, perforated sail-shaped steel mesh is hooked along the suspension cables to mimic the sail boat iconic image and to generate wind powered energy. The energy generated is computed to be enough to power the whole bridge activities as well as the boat piers providing free-power access points to the people who use felukas and sail boats. The Green-power concept is completed by a policy to eliminate diesel discharge in the Nile by replacing the polluting vessels used by the poor by clean battery-operated boats powered by the bridge wind energy chargers
Night Life along the bridge
Thank You
