Villa Opale / Driss Ketani

This house is projected on a north-south oriented plot with a sea view on the first floor at the northwest corner. The footprint of the house is generated by the need to perfectly fit with the adjoining house and by the urban regulations. The pedestrian entrance is on a private allotment street while the parking entrance is on a street on the north side of the plot. The plan is organized to hav...

Guelmim Airport / Group 3 Architects

The new Guelmim airport is integrated in an existing military infrastructure located 3km north of the city. The stakes of the project were simplicity, efficiency, environmental control and extensibility, which is a prerequisite for the durability of an airport. It is with this objective that the construction of the building was designed in 2 phases, resulting in a linear design parallel to the ...

L’Amandier Hotel / Nick Gowing Architects

Nick Gowing's L’Amandier Hotel emerges from the rich, red earth of the L’Amandier Plateau. So, whilst remaining true to the natural colour palette, he juxtaposed the buildings’ bold and striking geometric lines with the contours of the surrounding hills and mountains.

Wall of Knowledge / Tarik Zoubdi Architects

"Wall of knowledge" is a construction project of a middle school in the city of El Jadida (100 km south of Casablanca). The school was built for the OCP employees' children. The irregular shape of the site and its orientation to the sun suggested a spatial distribution of the project in three main areas. The central area is a building reserved for teaching. It occupies the middle of the plot. T...

Yves Saint Laurent Museum / Studio KO

While studying the couturier’s archives, Studio KO became intrigued by the duality between curved and straight lines, and between loose and precise approaches to cutting fabric. The facade of the building appears as an intersection of cubes with a lace-like covering of bricks, creating patterns that recall the weft and warp of fabric. As with the lining of a couture jacket, the interior is radi...

Right-Side Down / Oualalou+Choi

The pavilion of morocco at the 14th Venice Biennale focused on territorial speculations in the Sahara: “inhabiting the uninhabitable.” The Sahara, with its extreme geography and climatic conditions, remains an unexplored territory for architectural speculation. We proposed an urban structure for this territory, a means of putting down roots, implanting urbanity and civilization.

Rehabilitation Of Four Caravansérail Of Fès Medina / Oualalou+Choi

The Medina of Fez constitutes an outstanding example of a medieval town created during the very first centuries of Islamisation of Morocco and presenting an original type of human settlement and traditional occupation of the land representative of Moroccan urban culture over a long historical period. The Medina of Fez bears a living witness to a nourishing city of the eastern Mediterranean havi...

Pietri Plaza / Kilo Architectures

Situated in the heart of Morocco’s capital city of Rabat, the plaza creates a dynamic new public gathering space which encourages both planned and spontaneous urban and cultural events. Previously, the plaza consisted of the residual space between four vehicular roads. By sinking the core of the plaza and re-attaching two sides of the plaza to pedestrian thoroughfares, we created an urban ‘livi...

Loom-Hyperbolic Higher Atlas / Barkow Leibinger Architekten

Marrakech is a city that offers an indigenous, a madly inventive, and vivid hand- craft culture oscillating between ad-hoc kitsch and the archaic sublime. It is apparent that these techniques are readily available and could be appropriated for a proposal for this Biennale. The question for us became: what techniques, which form of knowledge, can be brought to this situation that could start to ...

Mandarin Oriental / Pascal Desprez + Gilles & Boissier

Mandarin Oriental, Marrakech is set amid lush, lavish gardens surrounded by a walkway that allows guests to fully appreciate their charms. An avenue lined with palm trees provides a spectacular entrance, referencing the traditional Moroccan palm groves, while small mounds recall the dunes of the South Moroccan desert. Scattered among the palm trees, pink bougainvillea are cut into Japanese shap...

Hotel Sahrai / Christophe Pillet

The five-star Hotel Sahrai, designed by the architect and designer Christophe Pillet, enjoys spectacular views of the largest medina in the Arab world, taking in twelve centuries of the city’s history in one fell swoop. Just 2h30 away from Paris, it offers a totally new hotel experience in Fez. An alternative to the shady isolation of the riads and the impersonal feel of the big resorts, its ar...

Royal Mansour Luxury Hotel / 3BIS Interior Architecture

The Royal Mansour is the result of pure inspiration: a dream made real, and a spectacular recreation of a beautiful way of life. The very soul of Morocco is reflected in the fulfilment of this vision, one that is faithful to architectural tradition, and honours both heritage crafts and contemporary artistic talent. Yet its most memorable aspect is its sense of welcome – that’s where the real ma...

Mohammed VI Polytechnic University / Ricardo Bofill Taller Architects

As a result of an international competition, the group OCP, a global leader in phosphates extraction and transformation, commissioned in 2011 the design of the campus for the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University to RBTA. Extending over approximately 55 hectares, the Campus for Mohammed VI Polytechnic University is the milestone of the ambitious scheme for the Mohammed VI Green City, a sustainable...

COP 22 Village / Oualalou+Choi

Temporary Urbanism: Every year for the past twenty years, thousands of delegates from 195 countries have met for the United Nations conference on climate change in order to address questions concerning the future of the planet. This year, the office OUALALOU+CHOI was chosen to design the exhibition spaces for the COP22 which will take place from the 7-18 of November in Marrakech. This project, ...

Villa K / Studio KO

Located at the very end of a traditional village facing the Atlas Mountains, its earth blocks create an enigmatic first impression when seen from below. Echoing old surrounding houses, those volumes constitute the ultimate built layer of the village before the great emptiness.After reaching the main level located on top of an outdoor stairway, a black infinity pool brings the sight far south. C...

Villa Agava / Driss Kettani

Villa Agava is a contemporary house, Yes, but not in the conventional sense. It explores the tenets of traditional Moroccan space planning, manouvering the modern building codes and council requirements to achieve elements of privacy, solidarity in forma and the good old courtyard expereince. It is easy to see how Driss Kettani, in this instance apart from the dynamic duo of Amine Siana and Saa...

Maroc Telecom Tower / Jean-Paul Viguier and Associates

Like many historic cities, Rabat is proud of its past but also eager to look to the future. The city could not, therefore, avoid the necessity to grow while combining tradition and modernity.

Laayoune Adult Education Centre / Urban Agency and OUALALOU+CHOI

The project for a 10.000m2 adult education centre, located in the south-west of Morocco in a harsh and isolated area, aspires to create a robust world class education facility that will give generously to its community. Although the given site is quite large, the building occupies half of it in order to create a compact and introverted building, with a humble and simple exterior leading into a ...

Centre for Training and Qualification in Marrakech Crafts / Abdelhakim Guilmi

Centre for Training and Qualification in Marrakech Crafts Crafts by Abdelhakim Guilmi is a giant that holds on its shoulders the little known architect who designed it. It is reminiscent of the good old arabic architecture with rigorous tenets of modern innuendos. The entire atmosphere of the building, detaching the obvious social impact to the community, oozes of a particular touch of quintess...

Tabanlioglu Architects Releases Plans for Marrakech Congress Center

Tabanlioglu Architects have released plans for the new Marrakech Congress Centre in Morocco in a design that continues with the firm's tradition of pattern based architecture. The design follows an authentic ideology of incorporating culture and identity into the busy city, southwest of Rabat. Living Culture Marrakesh is a major city of Morocco. It is the fourth largest city in the country, aft...

Villa Z / Mohammed Amine Siana

The Villa Z is a product of very strict city regulations, ones that ultimately confined the building into a 15m distance in a tight square. It is oriented westwards to capture the evening sun and face the prominent avenue. The careful interplay of blank facades and glazed edifice is one that slowly revels itself in time, as if timid yet buoyed on by a strong presence of massing and intricate ba...

Volubilis / Kilo Architectures

Set within the most visited archaeological site in the Kingdom of Morocco, this project seeks to enhance the historical and symbolic significance of this unique UNESCO World Heritage site.  The site is an exceptionally well-preserved example of an ancient Roman colonial town and one of several antique sites in Morocco. Due to the lack of urban development in the immediate surroundings, the site...

Re-Tour – Casablanca / Kilo Architectures

The Re Tour project marks a marked emphasis on the maintenance of 20th century heritage and offers new ways to ever changing dynamic of investment and seeks to solve the ever troublesome matter of preserving architectural heritage vis a vis commercial investment.

Technology School of Laayoune/ Driss Ketani, Saad El Kabbaj & Mohamed Amine Siana

The project of the School of Laayoune Technology is part of the policy of decentralization of educational centers in different regions of Morocco and responds to a request from local graduates. The program is built around lessons spaces (classrooms, TP, amphitheater), documentation, administrative, educational and services like workshops and staff accommodation 

Cultural facilities, Housing and Offices / BOM Architecture

BOM Architecture is the winner of the competition for the construction of the 1st Museum of Architecture in Africa and in the Arab World in Tangier, Morocco. The proposal envisions a development which consists of three different sections: The Museum of Architecture ‘’Maison de l’architecture, 133 housing units, and retail shops and office spaces.

Fobe House / Guilhem Eustache

For many years I regularly visited Morocco. From the first trip I was bewitched by that country and the three projects studied to date are certainly fed, to varying degrees, by all the images and impressions gathered during my stays.
The work of main architects, painters, sculptors, conceptual artists or filmmakers of all periods and all schools have, I guess, more or less important influence o...

The Preschool of Aknaibich / BC Architects and Studies

The Preschool of Aknaibich is only 1 classroom, nevertheless a holistic architectural design, incorporating community dynamics, bioclimatics and a new vernacular style.Aknaibich is a town in transition: the eastern old town is made of earthen constructions, sinusoid roads and narrow alleys, while the western part exists of modern, plot-based concrete houses built by rural-urban emigrants. In ne...

Cohabitation / Kilo Architectures

This project, consisting of five experimental houses within a communal farm, proposes alternative modes of domesticity and co-habitation, both within the home and between homes. A line is not inherently a domestic form; it does not shelter or enclose. However, when faced with the challenge of placing two houses on the site in such as way as to maximize privacy while democratizing access to the ...

Casa Port Railway Station/ AREP

Casablanca is a modern city in Morocco with a concentration of Art Deco and international style and modernist buildings which tries to draw a lot from the vernacular Moorish architecture of the area. It is a modern city which has undergone change in a short time from experimental lifestyle of the residents. The city urban planning is also undergoing reorganization hence the Casa Port Station fi...

Marrakech-Menara Airport Extension/ E2A Architecture

The International Airport of Marrakech-Menara serves international flights from and to Europe as well as domestic flights. It is located 6 km southwest of downtown city center and 7km of the Djemaa el-Fna.

ARCHIDATUM ARCHIVES

RECENT NEWS AND EVENTS

OUR PARTNERS