Africa ranks highest both in the percentage of children in child labor and in the absolute number of children in child labor which is 72 million. Mining limestone in Egypt, especially in Minya city’s quarries is very dangerous because of using explosion (dynamite) and inappropriate drilling machines for children, also some of quarries’ officials in this region putting drugs in children’s food to keep them work for a long time .
As more than 152 million of children are in work, and more than 73 million children are in hazardous work that directly endangers their health, safety, and moral development, the industry sector is where children face the greatest risk of encountering hazards– three-quarters of children working in this sector are in hazardous work. The time and energy consumed during children’s work obstructs their ability to educate.
Children in child labor tend to perform relatively poorly in terms of learning achievement, so the tower designed to fill out this gap, as it provides children by suitable spaces to learn, play, innovate and create more products. Hence, learn to earn methodology will take place in this situation as to earn more money by creative activity they do and intelligent products they produce, consequently they will help to satisfy their family’s needs.
“White Faces” tower concerning on the daily habits where the child must be grown in, its concept is to use the existing raw materials of limestone in sculpturing and lime-powder with other modeling techniques through technology, robots and computational control methods.
Sculpturing reflects the ancient Egyptians history where most of them are located at the cities in south of Egypt nearby to the selected site, as monumental sculpture temples, tombs and pyramids are world famous, that had established by limestone. The program story begins with an underground mining and storage space for limestone, the ground level is an exhibition with open spaces to gives visitors ability to circulate around the children’s work.
Then the workshops area equipped by robotic arms using technological control – CAM (Computer aided manufacturing) – for producing prefabricated and large-scale models, after that the zone of the manual small-scale sculpturing. In the middle of the tower, the children’s shelters are located with open green zone. Overhead there are libraries and education areas to keep children in touch with classes and updated with new researches and methods.
On the top of the tower there are multiple slabs containing green areas to be a free flexible space for children to heal and entertain and to provide the tower with natural ventilation by converting carbon dioxide to oxygen directed by the vertical pipes along the tower to keep children healthy. Finally, all tower zones reflected by the children’s homes leveling where they leave, to make it more friendly and familiar for them. Source by Aly Magdy Research Studio.
- Location: Egypt
- Architect: Aly Magdy Research Studio
- Project Team: Aly Magdy Mohamed Fouad Ibrahim, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Darwish
- Status: Competition entry
- Year: 2018
- Images: Courtesy of Aly Magdy Research Studio