If you just glance at the website for Zaha Hadid Architects, the lines that make up the navigation framework look very similar to the newest design, Stone Towers, a development of office, retail, residential and luxury hotel buildings to be designed in Cairo, Egypt for the Rooya Group. I am always intrigued by the lines used in Zaha Hadid’s designs.

image via dezeen

The building’s stonework is inspired by the ancient Egyptian stones which “incorporates a vast array of patterns and textures that, when illuminated by the intense sunlight of the region, creates animated displays of light and shadow. The effect is powerful, direct and inspiring. The facades on the North and South elevations of each building within Stone Towers adopts a rich vocabulary of alternating protrusions, recesses and voids to enhance the deep reveal shadow lines that accentuate the curvatures of each building within the development and animate the project throughout the day.”

- via bustler

Zaha Hadid always works with such interesting lines that are almost verging on retro. These forms could be likened to many things in the natural world but according to Hadid who believes that care must be taken not to turn this develoment into a repetitive field of concrete, “the architecture of Stone Towers pursues a geometric rhythm of similar, interlocking, yet individually differentiated building forms that creates a cohesive composition.”

I’m particularly, of course, interested in the landscape but at this stage all they really say about the landscape design is that there will be sunken landscape gardens and a plaza called ‘Delta’. I’m especially curious about the ways they intend to cool the environment. In the imagery there are large pools of water so I’m guessing water features, flooding and using the cooled water from air conditioning systems to cool horizontal surfaces and chill the air. It will be interesting to see how this develops and how the pedestrian environment takes shape.

images via designboom