the viable mina

Mina is part of the most prominent religious gathering in the world which is Haj. The first questions that come to mind while designing the Mina project are how to create an executable module, hygienic and crowd controllable. Other dimensions in the project are also necessary to consider, such as religious, cultural, sustainable, functional, and aesthetical.

The project design starts with dividing the Mina site into large urban plots such as the one suggested for this competition (120* 130) m and accommodating 2560- 2800 persons to control the crowd. 65% of the plot area contributes to built-up, and 35% is donated to open spaces, greenery, pedestrians, and prayers area following the acceptable master planning standards. As Mina is active only six days of the year and remains vacant on the rest days, the design suggests converting the top of the roof of these units to probably the most significant power plant of PV panels serving both Mina during the six days and the country on the rest days of the year. These multi-functional properties of the Mina project will return the project's expenditures in the long term of the project life.

The design of the plot starts with adding a shaded square area in the center of the plot and is oriented towards Kaaba for gathering and prayers of people living in this area. Then the site is divided into eight modular nodes (38*38) m around the square area in the center. Each node will serve 320 persons, divided between 4 residential units (20 beds in each room) following the required standards of area/person in brief. It will also consist of one hygienic unit containing 28 toilets, 31 ablution spaces, and 16 bath showers. The node also will consist of one linear multipurpose unit for commercial, office, and storing purposes. To better control crowd and hygiene in the node, it is designed to have one linear access (Maximum two for emergency conditions) similar to Cul-de-sac hosing that will not allow people of two nodes mingled because of the dead ends. The general layout of this design resembles the cultural dimension of the Islamic cities and the authenticity of the place, which usually consists of the clustered organization of spaces and has a central gathering point which generally is a big mosque. It also resembles the soul of this whole journey which is religiously centered.

> A sustainable project in different layers

The sustainable dimension of the project works on different layers of the project to minimize the energy consumption for air-conditioning. On the urban scale, the top roofs of the units can be converted to a big PV panel power plant to provide renewable energy for the project during the six days and for the rest of the country during the other days of the year. On the node scale, the layout design has been inspired by the vernacular architecture of the site, which corresponds to the climatic conditions of the arid regions. Consequently, The units are close to each other to provide shade for the pedestrian roads and the units themselves. The roof of the node has been designed with different heights to provide more shading and protection from solar radiation. The nodes also contain one central fountain that can moderate the micro-climate inside the canopy. On the unit scale, special care was added to the design of the details of windows by adding perforated screens of the Islamic patterns to prevent the direct solar radiation on the indoors spaces apart of its cultural dimension. The units' facade will also be covered by terracotta cladding prefabricated for this project, which is produced from lime mainly and has numerous environmental outcomes in terms of insulation, thermal massing properties, and time slagging for the heat transfer between indoor and outdoor of the tents.

Functional dimension of the project.

The residential unit’s dimensions are (19*12) m determined by the modular dimensions of furniture, mainly beds, to avoid space waste and accommodate the maximum possible number of people in the units. Accordingly, the residential units were divided into a corridor of 2m in the center and two 5m wide zones on each side to have 12m as a width for each unit. The unit is two floors and will contain 80 beds divided between 4 bedrooms, 3 on the first floors and 1 on the ground floor for disabled people. This is to comply with the required spaces/person in the project brief. The rooms will have double-story beds to save spaces to the maximum. The unit also consists of two worshiping rooms, one on the ground and one on the first floor. It also consists of a living room, a kitchen with a dining room of 40 seats, storage, and laundry on the ground floor.

The bathroom units serve four units in each node (320 persons in total). The unit is two floors and consists of three main zones, toilet, ablution, and bathroom. It consists of 28 toilets, 31 ablution spaces, and 16 bath showers to properly serve the node of 320 people living in. on the other hand, a multi-purpose unit is a linear unit placed on the edge of the node. The linearity of the design serves the commercial purpose by having a longer façade. It also serves the office function by having a 6 m depth.

The structural system of the project is the Steel Stud Bearing wall system to serve mass production and construction. The stud will be covered by gypsum boards from inside and terracotta cladding from outside. The wall needs to be insulated from the inside by a layer of thermal insulation and damp proofing membrane. This type of construction complies with the environmental condition of the arid and hot climate of Mina.