Mall of Egypt, Cairo, Egitto

ALGA has been awarded the order for the design and supply of the bearings for the project of “Mall of Egypt”, a 160,000-square metre mall dominating the western half of the greater Cairo metropolis.

The supply will include Nos.8 steel pot bearings (5 of them with C-shaped hysteretic damping elements to dissipate the seismic energy preventing localization and concentration of deformation) for the Ski Park structure and Nos.550 bearings (free sliding elastomeric and steel pot types) for the Shopping Mall structure.

The bearings for the Ski Park, designed basing on the criteria of elastoplastic behaviour of steel elements, have a vertical capacity between 22.000kN and 60.000kN and can bear a horizontal force up to 2.900kN. The possible seismic horizontal displacement can reach 420mm.

These Hysteretic Damping Bearings are both of fixed, called PND and movable, called PNUD types.

The shopping mall will be built on about 400.000 square metres of land outside Cairo, will have more than 400 shops, a Carrefour hypermarket, 17-screen cinema complex, family entertainment centre, over 50 food and beverage outlets and North Africa’s first manmade indoor ski resort, similar to Ski Dubai in the Mall of the Emirates.

The retail mall will be built on two levels and the structure will even provide a direct access from the Al Wahat highway and parking spaces for 6.500 vehicles.

Contractor of the project is a 50/50 joint venture between companies Besix Group and Orascom Construction and the owner is the UAE-based developer Majid Al Futtaim (MAF) Properties.