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This weird looking structure in the remote plains of El Gouna, Egypt extends over one million square feet in the Sahara Desert. You can even see it from space. But what is it? Did aliens make this?

The structure wasn't built eons ago. Its name is Desert Breath and it was finished in 1997 by the D.A.ST. Arteam, composed by Danae Stratou (installation artist), Alexandra Stratou (industrial designer & architect), Stella Constantinides (architect). They explain:
Desert Breath expands in an area of 100.000 m2, in the eastern Sahara desert bordering the Red Sea in El Gouna, Egypt. It is a site-specific work that generated out of our perception of the site itself. Its construction consists of the displacement of 8.000 m3 of sand formed so as to create precise positive and negative conical volumes. The conical volumes form two interlocking spirals that move out from a common centre with a phase difference of 180o degrees in the same direction of rotation. The centre is a 30-metre diameter vessel formed in a W-shaped section and filled with water to its rim.

Located between the sea and a body of mountains at the point where the immensity of the sea meets the immensity of the desert, the work functions on two different levels in terms of viewpoint: from above as a visual image, and from the ground, walking the spiral pathway, a physical experience.
Check it out in the video below along with some other images in the gallery.



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