London architect beats entrants from across the globe

Weston Williamson has beaten Zaha Hadid Architects to win an international design competition for Cairo鈥檚 Science City.

The 125,000sq m project will be a national institute for scientific innovation and will be built in the desert in a new town on the western edge of the Egyptian capital called 鈥6th of October City鈥.

Chris Williamson, one of the founders of WW&P, said: 鈥淲e are proud to have won. Needless to say that Egypt has a unique cultural heritage, but we were also attracted by the ambition of the project, clearly expressed through the brief.

鈥淲e look forward to developing the design and creating something worthy for Egypt鈥檚 future generations.鈥

The Science City project will involve an entirely new integrated masterplan and conceptual design that will ultimately create the first 21st-century science museum, learning and research facility in Egypt.

The single-stage competition was run by the Library of Alexandria institution and the judges included Michael Sorkin.

The design brief was to 鈥渃reate a set of buildings and spaces that will be inspiring inside and out, and express a particular vision of the quest for knowledge and the pursuit of science鈥.

The finalists

1: Weston Williamson & Partners, UK

2: Ngiom Partnership, Malaysia

3: Zaha Hadid Architects, UK

4: Gansam Architects, Korea

Honourable mention: Petras Architecture & XCON Housos, Greece

Honourable mention: Joaquim Caetano de Lima Filho, Daniel Henrique Ribeiro, Giliarde Silva, Guilherme Oliveira

Honourable mention: Francisco Jorquera, Spain

Honourable mention: Whitespace Architects, Dubai