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Aqbin L'Teltiween. Women's house in the drowning oasis.
Name
Ellen Simonia Rasmussen
Education degree
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Architecture
Institute
Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape
Program
Architecture and Landscape
Year
2025
Awards
VOLA
The community house, Aqbin L’Teltiween (house of women), is located in the Siwa Oasis, in Sahara Desert. Based on the village’s social syntax, the women's house is composed of zones of intimacy that support a flexible program of activites such as gym and spa activities as well as collective cultural activities and clinic.
The project seeks to integrate the geological as well as the social foundation for the house into its program through interconnedtedness with the ground, the aquifer underneath, the clay of the walls, the program as well as the functionality of the house.
Siwa Oasis is situated in the Qatar depression in the Sahara desert. Most of the oasis is around 20 m below sea level. To the South the Great Sandsea is spread out and to the North 350 km of rocky desert seperates the oasis from the Mediterranean Sea.
Siwa Oasis
Underneath the oasis an ancient sea has been captivated in layers of limestone. In Siwa the water reaches the surface and creates natural springs allowing the lush vegetation of the oasis.
I ask my Siwi friend Salah if the water will on day run dry? He tells me that it is not only one sea underneath Siwa, but many seas on top of each other. When one sea runs dry, the sea underneath will fill it up again.
The Nubian aquifer lies under the Sahara oasis and stretches into Sudan, Chad, Lybia and Egypt.
Today more water is being pumped up from the aquifer than what can seep down through the mud again, resulting in flooding and rising groundwater in the oasis
Section from the center of the oasis, the old fortress, Shali and to the far East of the oasis, cutting through zones of built territory, old gardens, saltlakes, salt harvest areas, the new industrial gardens and finally the desert.
section of siwa center and eastern oasis.
Sabukha is an old part of Siwa town. Part of it rests on bedrock, but mostly the area sits on a humid clay ground. This affects the traditional mud houses which in many cases have been abandoned because of humidity and hence structural damage to the walls. New houses emerging in the area are being built on concrete slabs and elevated around one meter from ground level.
Collage of Siwa house fronts.
The site plan showing the built area, the alleys and the ruins around.
Site plan showing the zouk (center) gardens and then Sabukha area where the site is located.
Sabukha emerged when some of the first settlers decided to leave the fortress, Shali, and settle in the gardens instead. Today Sabukha gardens remains between Shali and the built territory of Sabukha
Based on research of the women's movements and the traditional syntax of the houses, the level of intimacies within the house is being researched.
The local materials each represent a protection or a level of security within the house walls. A study of fields of intimacies and the agency of each material arrange the use of materials due to its properties.
Analysis of the traditional programming of the Siwi house
Study of intimacies in sections of the house
Study of intimacy in section
Study of dry and wet zones in the house
groundlevel, Western part. Study of material agency and intimacy
First floor, Western part. Study of material agency and intimacy
Courtyard South, study of material agency and intimacy.
Ground level, Courtyard East. Study of material agency and intimacy
Siwa tid . Siwa time
Siwa tid . Siwa time
I call it Siwa time.
The time it takes for henna to grow out of a nail.
The time between el Fakr, el Dor og el Asr prayers.
The time when the dates are green, yellow, red or brown
During the night, ZamZam travels with her sister through the desert to visit me in Cairo.
She tells her father stories to make him stay behind.
In the morning I pick them up from the busstation. Two shades of black. I know them from the many plasticbags. Freshbaked bread for me, dates and other sweets they know I love from the oasis.
ZamZam is wearing a watch. It stopped working long ago
Trails of movements studying the movements of the women within the city and the levels of intimacy in built territory.
Study of intimacy through trails through Sabukha and Masheya part of Siwa town
Thumbnail
Field studies. Spheres of intimacy
Taking inspiration from ancient Roman pools, the wet territory of the house, sitting on muddy ground is built from burned clay bricks, while the dry territory on the bedrock is built in the local salt architecture, kerchief. Zones of intimacy are framed by walls in local translucent alabaster stone as well as walls built by fossilised salt bricks.
As the heart of the house the pool is center of the courtyard. From the courtyard is access to the embroidery workshop, the cooking area, and clinic area far back in the house. The house has two compost toilets with one one side of the courtyard and the traditional oven to the other side.
The stairs in the back of the house leads to the gym, the clinic facility and the roof top.
Shades made from vertical floating palmfiber mats provides shade but still a view to the sky. Zones of acacia trees South and North create a middle zone that blocks sound and vision and shades the courtyard
Section looking South, cutting through the main kitchen and common room, the embroidery workshop, looking onto the alabaster translucent wall seperating the courtyard from the acacia tree section behind. To the East of the house, under the alley is the waste water reservoir.
The section cuts through the pool and facing the alabaster stone walls to the South, creating a translucent boundary before the acacia tree zone and finally the outer wall.
Site study. Siwa Oasis
45 degrees in Siwa. We cast in the sun where the clay dries in record speed.
The porous boundaries of my skin absolve in sweat and steam.
The clay, the material, fill into all scratches and voids. The Henna make my scars dark.
When I tell the women, that the henna reminds me of Siwa long after I am gone, they immediately understand and smile conspiratorially to me.
I smell the tips of my fingers. My son says they always small of henna, even in the whitest winter paleness
alabaster stone
Casts of ground. Studying degrees of wetness.
Found object. Limestone penetrated by humidity
Bricks of fossilised salt I degrees of solution
Kerchief stones and clay mortar from an old ruin in Siwa rebuilt into a 1:10 model wall.
Map of Sabukha embroidered by Naama and ZamZam.
Porcelain, Plaster and salt site model showing areas of bedrock and muddy ground.
Cast in windowgalss and glass dust of Siwa Oasis
Glass dust model of Siwa Oasis
Window glass model of Siwa Oasis
Cast in plaster. Study of folds in fabric
The Royal Danish Academy supports the Sustainable Development Goals
Since 2017 the Royal Danish Academy has worked with the Sustainable Development Goals. This is reflected in our research, our teaching and in our students’ projects. This project relates to the following UN goal(-s)
