TANK WORLDS

Rehab Salama 

Tank Worlds : Miniaturising the Gigantic
Āyat al-Qāhirah: Cairo’s Cosmic Realms and Earthly Realities


Āyat al-Qāhirah is an exploration of Cairo’s sacred architecture as a mediator where the human, the landscape, and the cosmos collide and coalesce. The project analyzes, interprets, and speculates how architecture and architectural representation becomes a spatio-urban bridge between the earthly and the cosmic. The project proposes a network of architectural tethers, that link this world and imagined corollaries. It connects the seen and the unseen, the sensible and the unintelligible, the physical and the metaphysical, the quotidian and the divine, serving as a timeless manifestation of hidden orders imposed on the material world through the constant motions - or harakat - of the cosmos and earth.

A series of tank world experiments were conducted as a catalyst or prelude to the design of the architectural registers. The first set of experiments used a vibration speaker, to visualize sound through matter, momentarily creating intricate fractal ripples that follow the frequencies of the sound projected. Experiment 2 is a set of concaved profiles that were tested in the water and subjected to sound vibrations. These concaves surfaces reflect and focus (concentrate) sound waves, and this disturbance or change in the soundwaves is articulated on the surface of the water. The final set of experiments were an attempt to simulate the environmental phenomena of the Khamasin Winds and miniaturize the expansiveness of these dust storms within the tank model. A series of mesh fabrics were layered in a variety of densities to collect and filter sand in the tank.

Dust Collector Experiment (Simulating the Khamasin Winds)




Sound Mirror Experiment (Concentrating and Amplifying Sound)




Water Basin Experiment (Visualizing the Call to Prayer)