Ruben Dahmen

Encounter the Silence

Cairo · 2018 · Study project with the German University in Cairo

Section drawing at 1:200 in which the large concrete shell hangs like a crescent between slender columns, with the surrounding apartment blocks and street life alongside.
Black and white image of a closed concrete cube standing alone on flat farmland, a row of palm trees behind it and high cirrus cloud above; the year 2018 in the bottom right.
Street scene in Cairo with tuk-tuks, vans and a vendor on a bicycle; on the left the closed concrete wall of the building rises between the apartment blocks. The year 2030 in the bottom right.
Four interior views side by side: the steps at the entrance, a forest of concrete columns, the curving spiral stair, and a figure stepping into the round shell.
Someone lies alone on the curved concrete floor of the round shell; above them the opening cuts a sharp circle out of the clouded sky.
Plan drawing at 1:200 with a regular grid of square columns, the circle of the shell above it and the spiral stair dotted within.
Detail drawings of the construction: the round stair suspended from a column with eye bolts, the modular stair components, and the rough concrete finish intended to scatter high frequency sound.
Four analysis maps of Cairo: the urban area along the Nile, the voids in the old city, and two aerial photographs in which irrigation channels turn into streets.
Section 1:200 — the shell hangs between the columns. 01 / 08

Cairo is dense, jammed and rowdy. Traffic roars itself along the streets. The market vendors shout out their products to the public, and advertisements scream for our attention everywhere. This city stimulates the senses to the extreme.

This building encounters the silence on the peaceful farmland. Land that will soon be flooded by inferior apartment buildings, roaring traffic and ear-piercing market stalls. In the middle of this, the silence is heard.

When I enter the building I hear a high contrast in sounds. The walls reflect the street noise, creating a crescendo at the point where I enter and descend. Down into the forest of columns, where the buzz of the city echoes in extreme reverberation. The circular stairway leads me up in a long walk, slowly getting nearer to the hanging spherical structure above me. Once I enter the bowl, the only thing that is left is my own sound reflecting off the rugged concrete shell. The opening above me cuts a clear round circle out of the sky. By the absence of heavy stimulations I can focus on my very existence.

Alone in this chamber, I am overwhelmed by this precious moment of silence.

The site

Just outside the city there is still farmland, cut through by irrigation channels. That land is being built over fast: the channels become streets, the fields become housing blocks. The research mapped that movement, alongside the voids that remain in old Cairo. The building is set in the middle of that change — standing alone in the field in one image, and twelve years later enclosed by exactly the blocks it saw coming.

The building

The concrete is deliberately left rough: a coarse surface scatters high frequencies instead of bouncing them back. The stair is suspended from the columns on eye bolts and built up from identical, modular parts.

Location
El Haraneya, Cairo
Year
2018
Form
Study project, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
Host
German University in Cairo
Time on site
Two weeks
Tutors
Jana Crepon, Lada Hršak, Billy Nolan
Programme
A building for silence
Material
Concrete, left raw
Status
Design; not built
Publication
Delta Strikes Back, 2019