Italian architects Stefano Boeri Architetti have presented three ecological projects - a hotel and two apartment buildings - planned for Cairo's new administrative capital being built in the southeast of the city.
The three experimental buildings or 'green cubes' will be built by Egyptian construction firm MISR Italia Properties in a central area of the new capital and will be prototypes for a type of architecture that will be replicated throughout Cairo, SBA said at Thursday's presentation.
The buildings measure 30 metres high and 30 metres wide and can contain 350 trees and more than 14,000 evergreen shrubs belonging to 100 different species - a third of those that grow in the whole of Cairo, SBA said.
The green space will extend over more than 3,600 square metres - the area of the planned site and its three new vertical forests will be able to absorb seven tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and to produce eight tonnes of oxygen.
In presenting the three 'green cubes', Stefano Boeri and Francesca Cesa Bianchi, partner and director of SBA outlined a vision of a "Greener Cairo" involving six strategies to demineralise the Egyptian metropolis.
The 'green cubes' were designed by SBA with designer Shimaa Shalash as a local partner and the collaboration of landscape gardener Laura Gatti.
Besides constructing 'green' buildings and vertical forests, Cairo's ecological conversion includes a major campaign to make the thousands of flat roofs in the city green, the 'revegetation' of the building facades and the construction of a system of 'green corridors' that will cross Cairo and be connected by a large orbital forest.
