Amare at Solare Ras El Hekma Steps Down to the Mediterranean

On Egypt’s North Coast, the Mediterranean has always been more than scenery. It shapes how homes are oriented, how spaces open and where life gravitates throughout the summer. The most compelling architecture here understands that the relationship with the water begins long before the shoreline.

At Amare, Italian for ‘to love’, that relationship is written into the land. The new seafront neighbourhood within Misr Italia Properties’ 400-acre Solare Ras El Hekma spans 100 acres, bringing together 421 villas across seven natural elevation levels and nine rows, rising to 31 metres above sea level before stepping down towards the Mediterranean.

The villas are designed across one-storey and two-storey formats, ranging from four to six bedrooms, while the uppermost two rows comprise standalone villas and twin houses. Rather than flattening the site, the architecture works with its changing elevations, using the terrain to open different perspectives towards the water as the neighbourhood gradually unfurls towards the shore.

It is a particularly fitting proposition for the North Coast, where the boundaries between house, garden, beach and sea have always been porous. Here, the low-slung architecture and stepped landscape extend that relationship across Amare, allowing the transition between indoors and outdoors to feel almost continuous.

At the water’s edge, residential life gives way to hospitality. Some 270 seafront cabins branded under Marriott International’s Autograph Collection sit directly along the shore, extending Amare’s progression from villa to landscape to Mediterranean and bringing hotel hospitality into the same coastal setting.

Much of that vision has already moved from plan to structure. Construction is running ahead of schedule, with around 80% of concrete works completed across Amare’s villas and 90% across its seafront cabins. The progress at Amare is already translating into completed villas ahead of the neighbourhood’s launch, with villa deliveries consequently expected to fall well within the originally planned two-year timeframe.

Realising Amare has brought together a sizeable group of specialists across architecture, landscape, engineering, design and construction. EDSA’s Xyang Li, Dr. Abdelghany of ECB Consulting, Shady El Ghoneimi of El Ghoneimi International, Karen Fadel of The Design Avenue, Ahmed Basha of El Amar Group and Abdelrahman Ismail of Arabtec Holding are among the collaborators, with RedCon serving as Amare’s primary contractor.

Amare, however, is one piece of a considerably larger coastal composition. Solare is organised into 10 distinct neighbourhoods, including the residential communities of Cielo and Lumera, alongside 16 lifestyle amenities and experiences, from its infinity pool and beach boardwalk to its other leisure and social spaces. Villas make up 70% of the destination, while three branded residences and hotels add a combined 430 rooms.

Water remains the thread running through it all. Approximately one kilometre of beachfront stretches across Solare, amounting to 200,000 sqm of beachfront space, while some 115,000 sqm of lagoons and other water features draw that relationship further inland.

The result is a masterplan in which residential, hospitality, leisure and landscape are conceived less as separate territories than as parts of the same coastal experience. At Amare, that idea becomes particularly tangible: the architecture follows the land, the land falls towards the water and the Mediterranean remains the constant point of reference.