Tent city Brief Updated on 22 APR 2021 - Download the new version here.

Premise

The city of Mecca is considered the birthplace of the Prophet, and also the place where he received the message of Islam, which transformed Mecca into the holiest city in the Islamic world. Mecca (present-day Saudi Arabia) has been a sacred site since ancient times, it even served as a site of pilgrimage for the Arabs tribes of central and North Arabia. 

Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every Muslim is expected to visit at least once in their lifetime if they can. It is a religious duty that is central to the Muslim belief and is one of the Five pillars of Islam.

The occurrence of recorded pilgrimage can be traced back to The Kaaba, tradition holds that it was a simple unroofed rectangular sanctuary in pre-Islamic times.

Vision 2030 

The Saudi government has an ambitious plan for the Vision 2030 agenda. The vision has several important thrust areas including making Saudi Arabia a major trade and cultural intersection between the west and east worlds. This document details the entire vision. This vision not only expands the lengths and breadths of inclusivity and advancement but also looks at expanding the Hajj pilgrim bandwidth to more than 10 million pilgrims. The goals here are not only quantitative but qualitative as well. 

With rising pilgrims, a lot of Hajj facilities like the tent city are being expanded to accommodate this new growth of visitors and provide them with clean, healthy experiences. Several upgrades have already rolled in (Like mosque expansion and transportation upgrades) to meet these expectations. 

The question however is, are all parts of the journey ready for this growth?

World’s largest tent city: Mina

Pilgrims in masses set out from Mecca to the sprawling tent city of Mina after their seven rounds at Mecca, Safa and Murah. The journey towards Mina is covered on foot or by buses and cars. Situated 12 kilometres outside Makkah, Mina is a small city located inside a valley. The stay in the city signifies the importance of the day spent before the day of sacrifice. 

Present-day Mina serves for 5-6 days of every year continuously. It hosts almost 100,000 tents, with increasing numbers of pilgrims each year. The tents create an entire settlement on land that remains deserted the other time of the year. 

 Issue

Currently, more than 2 million Muslims from around the world are stated to attend the five-day Hajj pilgrimage annually in Mecca. The figure is speculated to grow to 5- 10 million visitors in the coming decades which is sure to push the current system designs to their limits. 

The problem doesn't lie in handling so many visitors, but this huge influx of visitors for 5 days and the system remains vacant for the next 360 days. This is where it requires meticulous planning of resources, the tent city and infrastructure for managing this pilgrim surge. 

Hajj is a predominant source of livelihood for the majority of the population of Mecca. The tent city place serves 5 days of pilgrims that constitutes a lot of hospitality, tourism, transportation, food & beverage, retail and a lot of small businesses to begin with. This dependence is especially visible in the context of 2020.

Last year the entire pilgrim journey in the tent city was called off due to the outbreak of the pandemic. Only a few were permitted to attend the holy journey, which caused a major disruption in the financial stability and well-being of the people in the city.

Tent city

Can there be a better alternative to the current systems of tent-based housing with a more comprehensive solution? If horizontally the tent city is landlocked; can we see a new realm of vertical space making? Can covid-19 concerns and such medical emergencies be worked upon for healthy living for the elderly? With such a huge surge in the tent city, taking the elderly population coming in from various walks of life and educational backgrounds, how can we ensure safe crowd management for Hajj pilgrims when the capacity rises manifold in the coming decades?

Brief: The design challenge is to conceive a modular solution for housing Hajj pilgrims in the city of Mina. 

The stay duration at the tent city is aimed at 6 days of air-cooled living, cost-effective, fireproof, hygienic, and incremental to begin with and can go as much as elevating pilgrim experience with whichever means found imperative.

Objectives

• Capacity: Quantitatively achieving 1.5x capacity at least to justify proposition. 
• Hygiene: Creating hygienic, comfortable and barrier-free spaces that are inclusive. 
• Crowd Management: Ability to handle crowd, services and anticipate future needs.  
• Executable: A very realistic proposal that can be actually built. 

The objectives can be a point of beginning to conceive this design. Participants can recreate a situation as stated based on the following key points, before initiating the design process. 

Location 

Mina (Arabic: منى , romanized: Minā), also transliterated as Muna, and commonly known as the City of Tents, is a valley and neighbourhood located in the Masha'er district of Mecca. It is in the Makkah Province of Saudi Arabia, 8 kilometres (5 miles) southeast of Mecca, covering an area of approximately 20 km2 (7.7 sq mi). Mina consists of the tents in the Jamarat area. The challenge is to reinvent a smaller element of this huge system with a new form of transient housing. 

Module Size 

This new module for this competition is composed of 4 tent modules of the current tent unit of 8m x 8m in size offering about 1.6 sqm per person (40 people/64 sqm - Current ratio) per person in the living areas at present. The vision is to take this figure to 2.4sqm per person to give them hygienic spaces to live in while maximizing the capacity. Participants can conceive custom module size as a square or rectangle while maintaining the largest single side span at 16m. 

The size of the module has to be explained through valid justification. Internal planning, structural form, thermal comfort and furniture is up to the participants to propose. Participants must also show how this entire system will grow and change based on different situations and over large areas where it is to be replicated. Max. height is capped at 10 meters. 

Based on the standard module size you devise, conceive these 3 variants based on the following: 

1. Living module:

 The living module will be one of the most used variants across Mina City. A single living module will consist of sleeping areas, luggage storage units, space for worshipping, packed food storage, waste disposal and other services that might be needed to make the pilgrim experience convenient and sanitary. These have to be air-conditioned or air-cooled. 

2. Toilet Module:

 Devising a toilet module based on the same configurations, that can contain at least 25 stalls (WC or Bathing) in 1 unit to demonstrate the use cases. Ensure the washrooms are serviceable - ventilated well - and ready to take the high amount of visitors from various regions. 

3. Multifunctional Module:

 Devise a variant that can be used for multiple functions like storage, setting up shops or small offices. These units are usually found on the edges of living quarters that have access to public movement on a daily basis. 

You can modify the standard module size, as long as they fit and work together well. As these are two-storeyed modules now, the planning has to take into account vertical circulation and issues pertaining to different levels. 

(Each module will incorporate only one of these uses. No hybrid use cases are expected. The size of each module will be uniform for every function, be it living, toilets, commercial or any other purpose.)