This project introduces a speculative design framework that utilizes generative AI and community-driven participatory workshops to responsibly visualize lost urban heritage, focusing on the Egyptian Delta city of Imet (Tell Nebesha) as its primary case study.
By using AI-powered 3D Gaussian Splatting to build multi-hypothesis, 360° immersive reconstructions, the project produces a „community-realised heritage“: an approach to digital preservation that is speculative yet firmly grounded in evidence.

About

The Project: Beyond the Ruins is a design-research master thesis project on how we visualise heritage that has almost disappeared. It takes the ancient Egyptian city of Imet (a Delta site erased by saltwater, farming, and urban development) as a case for a broader question: how do you responsibly imagine what is no longer there? The project builds a five-stage, community-led workshop that pairs local memory with generative AI and 3D Gaussian Splatting to produce many plural, honest reconstructions rather than one authoritative image. Tested across three workshops, shown in an immersive 360° dome in Plymouth, and reviewed by Egyptologists, the work treats absence itself as a design condition: not recovering what is gone, but refusing to let it become silence.The Author: Eslam Mohammed (ElShamy) is an Egyptian designer and researcher completing his MA in Integrated Design at Anhalt University (Bauhaus Campus) in Dessau. Trained as an architect, his work sits at the intersection of heritage, immersive media, and critical AI. He co-founded LO(C)AI (Lab of Creative and Critical AI), an independent research collective exploring sustainable and locally grounded AI practices in the digital humanities.

Tour with Wadjet

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Aerial View

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Riverside

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

market

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Tower Houses

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Central Canals

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Central Market

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Pottery Workshops

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Eclipse

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Wadjet Temple

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Temple

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Ancient House

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.

Inventory

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*This is a speculative visual hypothesis generated through a human-AI co-design process and grounded in available archaeological and archival evidence. It should not be interpreted as an accurate or authoritative reconstruction. Interpretive limitations, evidential gaps, and AI hallucination may introduce inaccuracies in spatial, architectural, or material detail.