The winning design for Cairo Expo City delivers a unique facility for Cairo - a 450,000 square metre, state of the art city for exhibitions and conferences, located between the centre of Cairo and the city's airport.The project comprises a major international exhibition and conference centre with business hotel. A further office tower and a shopping centre are also proposed.
About the undulating fluid forms of the Cairo Expo City design, Hadid explained that they were inspired by the natural topography of the Nile valley, adding: "As the exhibition spaces require the greatest degree of flexibility, we wanted to ensure that all the public spaces and formal composition of Cairo Expo City relate to the surrounding Egyptian landscape. Along the great rivers of the region, most particularly the Nile, there is a powerful dynamic - a constant flow between the water and the land - which extends to incorporate the neighboring buildings and landscapes. For the Cairo Expo City design, we worked to capture that seamlessness and fluidity in an urban architectural context."
Zaha Hadid Architects was shortlisted with Norwegian architecture practice Snohetta for the second phase of the competition in April. Works will begin in October this year to clear the site.
