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" 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...
The main target regarding the LAP residential complex is not only to provide a luxury compound of modern villas with all the full residential services, allowing a sophisticate and environmental way to live in the growing town in a peaceful, tranquil and familiar way. The main issue that substantially stays back the idea of this plan is the reinterpretation of the African identity, reinventing t...
DAR is a family house on the Northern coast of Tunisia, overlooking the sea. The project consists in two separate volumes strongly connected to the garden, the pool and the sea view, set on top of a massive "platform".
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...
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...
Urko Sanchez Architects releases the newly completed Swahili gem in Tudor creek, a development that explores the complexities of traditional cultural extrapolations and the rigor of environmental comfort within the modern demands of aesthetics. This is a scheme that is terse but pith in the way it handles the elements that it sets out to tackle and ultimately explores the narrow and delicate el...
Arijiju lies on the lowland. The building behaves as though it has always been on that warm stone hillside with living, grassed roofs that move with the air and link into the earth and forest. It is there but not there. Partly sculptured into the rock bed, the subtle entrance opens into a fragrant, greened space with generous Swahili curves and an air of elastic calm. Walls of stone create walk...
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...
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...
The 600 square metre Villa was commissioned by a contemporary art dealer in Algeria as her new home and a place to host her private collection and some small events related to the art gallery. Given the harsh condition of the sun during good part of the year and at the same time the need to control the light in terms of quantity and quality to exhibit and protect the art pieces, it was decided ...
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...
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...
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
"No other project dominates this mature phase of the architect's work as much as the village of New Baris, in a way that is comparable to the notoriety of New Gourna twenty years before. There are so many contrasting factors between the two projects that it is beneficial to examine the parallels between them. Discovery of a large water well sixty kilometers south of the Kharga Oasis in 1963, wh...
The Rabat-Salé Infrastructure Project is part of a 6,000 hectares development of the Bouregreg Valley which aims to rehabilitate and promote the banks of the Bouregreg River to offer a pleasant place to live for the people of Rabat and Salé.
Saad El Kabbaj, Driss Kettani and Mohamed Amine Siana tried to avoid the clichés of the context alone by adopting a very modern development which also adopts the massiveness, strength, relief and the poetic nature of the forms of developments in the South.
The Technology School of Guelmim in Morocco is part of the development of academic institutions in the Southern regions of Morocco. The School development comprises of an amphitheatre, classrooms, workshops, TP rooms, administration buildings, library, lecturer’s offices and staff accommodation. The architects’ concept was to provide a contemporary and modern design which was inspired by its co...