Egypt
The subject for my portrait for Egypt is Sarah El Battouty who is an architect and climate policy specialist with 20 years’ experience in the sustainable design and development field.
Geography
Egypt is a country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west; the Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Source Wikipedia
Environmental issues
Egypt faces numerous environmental challenges, including water scarcity, air pollution, climate change impacts, and land degradation. These issues are exacerbated by rapid population growth, urbanization, and reliance on the Nile River.
About Sarah
Sarah's main passion is making buildings resilient to climate risks and promoting affordable and accessible low-tech solutions in spaces like homes and school.
She refused to join the family business and created her own start-up to design green and sustainable buildings that can be globally certified reaching net zero standards. Importantly for Sarah, her work includes buildings to all income strata and rural communities.
She believes that cooling homes in heat stress, adequate ventilation, energy provision and water reuse as well as using local construction materials contribute to prosperity and comfort and her process is to design with communities and not for them as she promotes the use of indigenous and local techniques imbedded in the cultural knowledge.
In 2013, she founded the multi award winning ECOnsult, Egypt’s leading green building consultancy which has the highest portfolio of green certified projects by a local architect & the first Carbon Neutral project in the region.
Sarah is also the founder of an scrap waste upcycling company MùBun which transforms the waste into high end furniture.
Sarah is a senior advisor to the Egyptian President from 2014 to the present day. Sarah is the first architect to become a UNFCCC Global Ambassador with the High Level Climate Champions.
Al-Wadi Al-Gadid Museum by ECOnsult 2013
The final video showing the full timelapse of Sarah’s portrait and telling her story can now be seen on the YouTube channel via the link below