Coexistence: Climate-Derived Urbanism for the Sahara

The Sahara is not empty. It is a system of forces: ground, wind, water, sun. Any city built there either works with those forces or is destroyed by them. Coexistence: City in Daya Iriji, a shortlisted entry in the Extreme Habitat Challenge: Sahara by Marta Wróblewska, takes the first path. It proposes a settlement designed to align with the desert's patterns rather than resist them.

Daya Iriji is a specific site in the Sahara with its own topography, wind corridors, and water table. The project begins with analysis of these conditions and builds form from them. This is not generic desert architecture. It is site-specific urbanism that could only exist in this place.

Reading the Terrain

The design starts with data. Wind simulations, rain patterns, and terrain analysis map the forces acting on the site. The resulting urban form follows these maps: buildings orient to capture prevailing winds for ventilation, streets align to channel occasional rainwater toward collection points, and density varies with topography.

This analytical approach is what separates speculative projects with real potential from those that only look good in renders. The city's shape is derived from evidence, not aesthetics. That the result also looks coherent is a consequence of the logic, not the goal.

Water Systems: Recycling at Every Scale

Water is the scarcest resource and therefore the primary organiser of the plan. The project proposes a closed-loop water system where every drop is collected, used, recycled, and reused. Rainwater harvesting, greywater treatment, and condensation capture work together as an integrated infrastructure.

The architectural sections show how these systems are embedded in the building fabric rather than added as separate utilities. Roofs collect. Walls filter. Foundations store. The building is the machine.

Passive Climate Response

The structures use passive cooling as the default, not as a supplement to mechanical systems. Deep courtyards create stack ventilation. Thick walls provide thermal mass. Atrium spaces draw hot air upward and out. Shaded streets reduce ground-level temperatures.

These are not new ideas. They are the same strategies that traditional Saharan cities, from Ghardaia to Shibam, have used for centuries. The project's contribution is demonstrating how to apply them at the scale of a new settlement, with modern performance standards, without losing the underlying logic.

Urban Grid and Landscape

The urban grid is not imposed on the landscape. It is shaped by it. The topographic visualisations show how building footprints follow contour lines, how streets trace natural drainage paths, and how open spaces correspond to existing depressions that can serve as water collection basins.

This produces a settlement that looks organic from above but is rigorously planned in section. The organic appearance is not formal play. It is the visible consequence of a city that respects its ground.

Why This Project Matters

The Extreme Habitat Challenge asked a simple, difficult question: how do you build a city in the Sahara? Coexistence answers by refusing to treat the desert as a problem to solve. Instead, it treats the desert as a set of instructions to follow. Wind tells you where to put openings. Water tells you where to put streets. Sun tells you where to put mass. The city is the diagram of its own climate.

For anyone working on climate-responsive urbanism, this project is worth studying. It demonstrates that sustainable design at the settlement scale is not about adding green technology to conventional plans. It is about deriving the plan from the environment in the first place.

View the Full Project

About the Designer

Designer: Marta Wróblewska

Enter a Design Competition on uni.xyz

uni.xyz runs design competitions year-round that ask architects and urban designers to tackle real problems in extreme climates, housing, sustainability, and public space.

Project credits: Coexistence: City in Daya Iriji by Marta Wróblewska. Shortlisted, Extreme Habitat Challenge: Sahara (uni.xyz).