Today’s population has reached a growth rate never seen before, and, globally, there are examples of traditional cities that have failed to adapt to this sudden change. Egypt makes no exception in this trend. In its largest city Cairo, this trend caused a considerable expansion of the phenomenon of informal settlements, areas spontaneously built by the inhabitants, often lacking regulation, planning, and basic needs. By investigating the context of Cairo, in particular the area of Sakiat Mekki, the paper explores the possibility of improving the quality of life in informal settlements with sustainable decentralized processing units (DPUs), tailored to an affordable and adaptable building system (A²BS). The goal of the DPUs is to enhance three main aspects of life (working, energy, and mobility) by gradually implementing small-scale subsystems of advanced construction in the hosting environment, thus providing a more flexible solution to evolve in time. The design was developed after an analysis based on Requirements Engineering (RE), to ensure that the system would be more easily accepted and the design proactively influenced by the existing community’s feedback. Accordingly, the construction elements were designed based on stakeholders’ needs. Thanks to a simplified construction process and joining system, not only this solution can be easily assembled by unskilled labor, but it could also be used as a step forward toward automation of the building process in substandard environments.      «

Today’s population has reached a growth rate never seen before, and, globally, there are examples of traditional cities that have failed to adapt to this sudden change. Egypt makes no exception in this trend. In its largest city Cairo, this trend caused a considerable expansion of the phenomenon of informal settlements, areas spontaneously built by the inhabitants, often lacking regulation, planning, and basic needs. By investigating the context of Cairo, in particular the area of Sakiat Mekki,...     »