Coffee with: Farah Faheem, Principal Architect of Karm Architecture Lab: Faheem (LinkedIn) serves as the managing principal architect of Karm Architecture Lab (KAL). Founded in 2014, KAL — a member of the KarmSolar group — offers cost-effective and eco-friendly buildings that are responsive to the surrounding environment and culture using locally-sourced natural earth materials such as stone, sand, and shale for self-sufficient construction. With over 12 years of experience in the Middle East and Egypt, Faheem focuses on the overarching economical and physiological values of environmental and high-performing architectural and urban designs.

We sat down with Faheem to talk about sustainable architecture, KAL’s projects, and how COP27 prompted an interest and growth in the sector.

Edited excerpts of our conversation follow:

Enterprise: Tell us a bit about the story behind KAL.

Farah Faheem: We are a design, construction, supervision, contracting, and urban planning firm based in Cairo. Our architecture lab was founded on the basis of offering a multidisciplinary approach to urban planning and construction, with sustainable, high-performing architecture at the heart of it all. We have two companies operating under KAL; a design arm and a construction arm, which both work hand-in-hand to provide high-quality design products that can be efficiently executed on-site with value engineering.

E: How are KAL’s developments eco-friendly?

FF: We have a research-based approach starting with design itself. We start with thinking about sourcing efficient and affordable building materials, instead of using common building materials such as red or white bricks, which can be costly. One example of this is the solar-powered Wadi Sabarah Lodge we built in Marsa Alam using fossilized coral limestone. Using readily available locally sourced materials like this limestone, there is no need for costly and carbon-extensive excavation processes. Using the limestone pushed down construction costs by 40% compared to traditional building methods. On the clean energy front, most of our developments are either fully powered by solar energy or supplemented with solar power.

E: What is the main obstacle KAL tries to overcome?

FF: We try to change the mindset and the ideas regarding what sustainable architecture means from a financial point of view, whether it’s reducing the construction budget by up to 40-50% in some cases or reducing the operational costs of buildings throughout their lifespans. For instance, if the lifespan of a typical building is 50 years and we’re able to push down operation costs by up to 50-70%, we are redefining sustainable architecture as the affordable alternative to traditional architectural design and construction — even if initial investment was higher for the sustainable approach in some instances.

E: How do you measure the energy-efficiency of your buildings?

FF: We incorporated an environmental engineering department in our company in the last four years to compute and produce actual data of how much our designs will reduce energy consumption throughout the lifespan of the building. From a user experience perspective, we’ve had real feedback from guests at Wadi Sabarah Lodge who have said that they were able to use their rooms without air conditioning in summer because of how the hotel was designed, even though it’s located in one of Egypt’s hottest regions. The same applies for a residential home we built in the same location, the Breathing Beach House.

E: Tell us a bit more about how the design process led to such results.

FF: All of our projects were designed with passive design strategies that ensure natural cross ventilation, ensuring the presence of an inlet and outlet for natural air flow, while ensuring protection from excessive heat gain.

In our design process, we assess the sun and wind’s movement throughout the year and protect the necessary elevations from excessive heat gain in summer. The beach house, for example, used a second skin wall, thick fossilized coral limestone walls, two ventilation towers, and a breezy plan layout to allow the house to operate as a living organism. The second skin protects the south elevation of the house from excessive heat gain. The two ventilation towers, a wind catcher and a solar chimney all operate alternatively to absorb natural cooled air into the house while the other tower sucks the hot air out.

The same kind of ideas were also used for the hotel, where you have multi-layered arcades to protect from excessive heat gain and encourage natural air flow through the various indoor and outdoor spaces. All of these interventions may seem minimal, but their actual impact on the indoor temperatures and the overall use-comfort levels is massive.

E: Are you witnessing a growth in the sustainable architecture sector locally or regionally?

FF: Yes, more so after the COP27 climate summit in Egypt last year. As a sustainability consultancy, KAL has been approached in the last few months by a few of the biggest real estate developers in Egypt to assess their ongoing developments and already built developments in a bid to enhance sustainability, energy efficiency, and user experience through design improvements. KAL is also exploring expansions in Europe and the Middle East.

E: What other projects do you have in the pipeline?

FF: We have a number of very exciting projects in the pipeline this year including hospitality projects. We’ve got a hotel being designed and built in Siwa, hopefully with the initiation of construction early next year. We’ve got another hotel concept that’s going to be spread out across Egypt and another in the Fayoum area we’re hoping to have constructed next year.

We also plan to establish another Karm Solar campus in the New Valley governorate, where we are also building a large scale solar station. The new campus will be a subterranean structure, which means the whole thing will be built underground, which we’re very excited to be introducing to Egypt. We’re also renovating a 70-year-old institutional building built by one of Hassan Fathy’s students.

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