Students of the Faculty of Engineering won first and fourth levels in the international competition for the place of sound in urban design

Under the auspices of Prof. Mahmoud El-Meteini, President of Ain Shams University, Prof. Abdel Fattah Saoud, Vice President for Education and Student Affairs; Prof. Omar Al-Husseini, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, students of the fourth year participated in the Architecture and Environmental Urbanism program, and students of the third year of the Landscaping Architecture Program at the Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, and within the framework of Soundscape and Aural Architecture for Cities, which is taught by Dr. Noha Gamal Saeed, Assistant Professor in the Department Urban design and urban planning, assistant teacher Mustafa Megahed, and teaching assistants Farah Walid and Ahmed Hassan Ibrahim in the international competition “The Place of Sound in Urban Design” announced by UNESCO 2022.

It is worth noting that the winning teams were honored at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris within the framework of the UNESCO Audio Week, in the presence of His Excellency Ambassador Alaa Youssef, Egyptian Ambassador to France and its permanent representative to UNESCO, and Mr. Minister Plenipotentiary Dr. Mohamed Al-Shahed, the alternate representative of Egypt to UNESCO, and Dr. Noha Gamal Saeed, a professor of the subject, in the presence of the organizing committee and the competition jury, and Mr. Christian Ogonet, founder of the "Week of Voice" in France.

The competition dealt with the idea of the sound of water in urban spaces "Water Resonances". Several French and Egyptian students participated in the competition. The Egyptian teams, which all belong to the Faculty of Engineering - Ain Shams University, have won.

The Egyptian students won three places: the first and the fourth, in addition to the fifth, an honorary position. As for the French teams, they got the first place repeated, and the third place and the second place were withheld.

The Egyptian Team No. 18 entitled "The Path" won first place. The work team consists of Ahmed Abdel-Hamid, Asala Abdel-Raouf, Sherry Samir, and Yehia Mohamed El-Haras, students in the fourth year of the Environmental Architecture and Urbanism Program. This project aims to improve the acoustic environment at Misr Station - Ramses, as it is a crowded place. There are multiple sources of noise, such as traffic congestion and the sounds of street vendors, in addition to the lack of shaded areas and seating areas for rest at the station.

While team 15 titled "Nile Harmonica", consisting of 4 students from the third year in the Landscaping Architecture Program, Sarah Kamel Al-Desouki, Reem Haitham Al-Ibiari, Alia Bassem Al-Amir, Shorouq Ashraf Abdel-Hamid won the fourth place. The design proposes to re-interact between citizens and the river water by designing wide staircases as a main seating space with polyethylene pipes passing through them. The design suggested the inclusion of underwater generators that create artificial waves of various frequencies that emit musical tones when they pass through those pipes.

Team 16, titled "Al-Sakia", also received an honorary award. The work team consists of Sandra Sameh, Rana Ayman, Ziad Alaa, and Hebat Allah Emad. The idea of the project stems from the identity of the Nile River throughout ancient Egyptian history, which reflects a sacred relationship with the Nile as the source of life. The team used the sound of the waterwheel on the Nile River in order to create an acoustic identity for water, promote urban agriculture and energy generation, and water purification inside the site.