Part architect, part
The front door · acacia · no two blocks alike
Trained as an architect in Alexandria, then in Milan, the designer spent a decade working on other people's houses in other people's cities before Siwa pulled him sideways. The first time was a short trip. The second time, he didn't leave for a year.
Bayt Gagy began as a sketch in a notebook during that year — a single line drawn along the shore of the salt lake, where the palm grove ends and the desert begins. Everything else grew from that line.
They sound like stone, but they bend when the site asks them to.
We spend a year on the site in every season. We do not decide anything before we have slept under its stars, walked it in the rain, and eaten with the people who have always lived there.
The most sustainable material is the one that is already next to the site. Even when it is harder — because the building then belongs to the place in a way no imported marble ever will.
Siwan masons have been building with kershef for a thousand years. Our job as designers is to get out of their way — to protect the craft, not supervise it.
A good building does not announce itself. When a visitor walks in and says "this has been here forever," we know we have finished. That is the highest compliment in our studio.
A year on site. A conversation with the village. A single A2 sketch. Local hands. Lime in five coats. A month living in the finished house before the client does.
A house every two years, on average. A few interiors. One restoration. Each one finished slowly, and only when it was finished.
A salt-stone house on the edge of Birket Siwa. Built with local masons using kershef, palm and lime. The studio's largest and slowest work — and the one the studio was, in a way, always going to build.
Open the house →
A standalone commission — a wall of hand-fitted acacia blocks for a private kitchen in the oasis. A study in light filtration using nothing but offcuts from a local carpenter.
A pro-bono restoration of a small corner of the old Shali fortress, in collaboration with the Siwan Heritage Trust. Mud-brick, lime, and a single new palm-beam ceiling.
An urban courtyard house for a family of five. A lattice-walled living room that filters the Mediterranean light into coins across the floor. The studio's first work built entirely with hand-carved wood.
A single-room pavilion on the salt lake — the first Siwan project, and the one that started the conversation. Built in six weeks. Still standing.
The studio takes a very small number of commissions each year. Write and tell us about the place.
Chapter VI · Contact →