Recent Activities
El Wakil continues in vigorous professional activity, dividing his time between Middle Eastern capitals.
In Beirut, Lebanon, he has designed three projects including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a prominent downtown site within the Solidere master plan; a town house re-interpreting traditional Levantine architecture to accommodate contemporary usage; and the Bank of Kuwait in the downtown Solidere district.
In Qatar he is undertaking the Master Planning of a city quarter, integrating best contemporary low-energy planning practice with climate-tempered Islamic built form.
El Wakil has recently designed a boutique hotel in El-Gouna, Red Sea, Egypt, and a mixed-use residential quarter within the Solidere International project Cairo Eastown.
He is also doing small town houses, and a new mosque, in Riyadh.
With Prince Sultan, the Saudi astronaut, he worked on developing and restoring a the old Al-'Udhaibat traditional farm in the Wadi Hanifa in Diriyah on the western outskirts of Riyadh. A book ‘Back to Earth’ recorded the project.
On a recent visit with the President of Senegal, El-Wakil was invited to develop experimental social housing in mud brick.
He has also been involved in the design development of a compressed-earth brick making machine in South Africa with the development of interlocking brick shapes.
El Wakil, empowered now with third generation CAD programmes, is very technologically savvy. He retains his aim of designing, one day, in homage to Fathy, a sustainable village retaining the culture and forms of tradition. He avows that green architecture need not look industrial.
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