ALOE-VEIL

Project idea

This project proposes a site-specific architectural intervention in Aswan, Egypt, aimed at restoring the cultivation of Aloe Vera and revitalizing the cultural legacy of Nubian traditional medicine. Rooted in environmental sensitivity and historical memory, the project responds to the long-standing impacts of the Aswan High Dam, which displaced Nubian communities and severed their connection to the land, the Nile, and the healing practices that once flourished there.

ALOE-VEIL—seeks to create a sustainable, culturally grounded environment where Aloe Vera can be cultivated, processed, and reintegrated into revived traditional healing systems. The design employs passive environmental strategies such as fog-harvesting mesh, evaporative cooling, palm-frond shading, and terraced planting structures to generate ideal growing conditions while reducing ecological strain. Spatially, ALOE-VEIL is organized into zones of varying access: private research and processing facilities, semi-public healing pods, and public educational landscapes—each facilitating different aspects of cultivation, healing, and community interaction.

The central objective is to craft a new architectural typology that merges ecological resilience with cultural continuity. By enabling the intergenerational transmission of Nubian healing knowledge and supporting the regeneration of Aloe Vera as a medicinal resource, ALOE-VEIL becomes both a physical and symbolic structure—one that shelters memory, revives tradition, and reclaims healing as a spatial act.

Project description

The scope of ALOE-VEIL involves the architectural reimagining of a healing and cultivation complex that addresses both environmental and cultural fragmentation resulting from the displacement of Nubian communities after the construction of the Aswan High Dam. One of the profound cultural losses that followed this event was the disappearance of traditional medicinal courts—intimate, climate-responsive spaces where healing rituals, herbal remedies, and communal care once took place. In their place, modern concrete housing developments emerged, often characterized by sealed interiors, mechanical cooling, and standardized finishes that erased the tactile, climatic, and ritual essence of Nubian healing architecture.

ALOE-VEIL responds by reinstating these lost spatial values through a design rooted in passive environmental systems and natural materials. The complex includes a network of C-shaped cultivation modules, fog-harvesting cooling units, and palm-frond-clad healing pods that reinterpret the communal and climatic logic of traditional courts. The solution incorporates zones for Aloe Vera cultivation, leaf resting and processing, therapeutic application, research, and cultural education—organized along the site's natural contours using gabion terraces, palm-trunk structures, and evaporative cooling skins.

By merging sustainable agriculture with the spatial rituals of Nubian healing, ALOE-VEIL offers a holistic framework for cultural resilience and ecological regeneration—reviving not just a plant, but the architecture of healing itself.

Technical information

The main structure is composed of vertically bundled palm trunks, structurally reinforced by tri-webbed steel columns that provide stability and elevation across the contoured site. The outer skin features woven palm fronds that offer natural shading and evaporative cooling, while a fog-harvesting mesh beneath enables passive irrigation and helps regulate interior temperatures. Gabion retaining walls filled with local stone support the terrain and serve as surfaces for resting and drying harvested Aloe Vera leaves. Internally, tiered palm wood shelves wrap around a spiral ramp, ensuring ideal airflow and sunlight exposure for cultivation.