Unit 2 2009-10

This year, our design investigation will focus on the city of Marrakech in Morocco. The unit will engage in this North African city, as an uncommon territory and culture that is undergoing critical change. We will carefully explore diverse existing spatial practices and respond with a design dialogue to develop responsive and imaginative proposals. Within this process, the unit will explore ways in which conditions of urban inhabitation and common spaces can be part of synergetic urban life.

Marrakech is located in the arid plains north of the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert. The city fabric is centred on an old Medina and expands with French colonial quarters and other more recent urban forms. For many centuries, it has been a major trading and craft-based city. In recent years, improved relationships with the EU have brought tourism and other economic activities to the city. This in return has redirected inner African migration to the city. The social and spatial dynamics are reflected in diverse forms of urban change. Nevertheless, the new sources of income have left a majority of the population fairly poor and marginalised in this process.

Uncommon City – Induction Exercises
To prepare for uncommon spatial conditions and to introduce unit specific methodologies, we will explore diverse cases of vernacular architecture, described in Bernard Rudofsky’s book Architecture without Architects.
By extracting key architectural qualities, this will serve as a source of inspiration for a small design exercise of an Urban Room. The Urban Room is a space that may be part of a pattern or situation, where sharing and living together demands unusual spatial solutions. The exercise enables the research of interdependent spatial, technical and representational aspects of design.

To prepare the unit trip to Marrakech, the unit will make a field trip book. This is part of Professional Practice and will prepare the unit to gain access to information that a group of architects would require, prior to working in such uncommon conditions. It serves as a kind of contract of a group with a city.

Fabric tanning and drying, Medina of Marrakech, by Tyra Lea Dokkedahl

The field trip to Marrakech was from 13th - 23rd of November. During that time, we stayed in two 19th century courtyard houses in the Medina of Marrakech. The Riad Sahara Nour and the Dar Touyir are located just across a little neighbourhood street in the Bab Doukkala area. They were our base to explore the city and reflect on gathered information, diverse impressions and experiences. The buildings allowed us to use several courtyards, roof terraces and a large workspace for drawings, tutorials, presentations and discussions.

During our visit to Marrakech, we did a one-day excursion to a small village with a farmhouse called 'Jnane Thihihit' in the countryside close to the Atlas Mountains. Like the surrounding architecture, the farmhouse was build in traditional building techniques, by using largely with locally available materials. The students participated in building a rammed earth wall.

During the field trip to Marrakech, Unit 2 focused on three major sites, which capture the diversity of recent urban dynamics. To the north is the Palmeraie site, in the east of the Medina the Tannery site and in the south-east Sidi Youssef. We explored the sites through a series of small workshops, walking, drawing, mapping, photography, interviews etc.

Back in London, the unit engaged in both collaborative works, comprising a Unit Model and the collection of information gathered in Marrakech, as well as individual proposals.
Like the city itself, the Unit Model was a puzzle of individual pieces and formed a collective entity. The model was made in plaster, demanding intensive engagement with the complex urban fabric.

The focus on urban inhabitation and common spaces has a series of reasons. More recent approaches to inhabitation are either speculative/ market driven or simply to cover basic needs. The limitation of open or enclosed common spaces derives from the way smaller scale communities used to work within the confinement of the Medina. With a strong increase in population size and a much larger urban territory, very unusual spaces and functions might be relevant to sustain and invigorate communities. A city allows for more than just the sum of its parts.

The sites and their contexts, as well as guiding research set the tone for distinct strategic interventions in a range of scales, from urban through to building qualities and their immanent details. The unit continued to develop student’s skills, intuition and judgement for a vigorous, yet crafted culture of space. Using urban design methodology, the individual projects focused on sited buildings, by invigorating existing and imagining new, creating schemes that are both, sustainable and enjoyable.

The first site is in the north of the city. Here the 20th century urban areas build under French colonial occupation are rapidly expanding and show diverse hybrids between European planning and North African urban cultures. By eating more and more into arable land close to a river and irrigation systems, the expansion opens questions of sustainability and demands unusual responses.

The research area is the urban boundary at the Palmeraie. The existing site is an undefined open space between two very different informal communities.
As the population is rapidly growing, the proposed brief indentifies a need for a local market for a range of people and it expands on the need for family housing. The design responds to the adjacent urban form through pathways and carefully proportioned set-backs. As such the groundfloor is a permeable part of the urban grain. Above, the housing forms a continous pattern of living units and diverse courtyards. Ground and upper floors form an intricate spatial and environmental experience.

Market and housing proposal, James Barrett

The initial project explores a sequence of distinctly different spatial conditions in Moroccan desert houses. While some rooms are dark and confined, other allow wide vistas over the surrounding landscape.

The design project is located on the Palmeraie edge and a road that leads into it. Here, the land is largely disused between two very contrasting urban neighbourhoods. Issues of sinking watertables have caused severe damage to the palm trees.

The intervention is an urban scale framework that is centred on a hamam (bath) and grey water treatment plant for the surrounding neighbourhood. The urban framework allows individual units to form a sensible public space.

The hamam sits on the edge of the city and opens onto the Palmaraie. The main part of the building is elevated to allow a shaded public space underneath. Above, the hamam allows a sequence of unfolding vistas deep into the Palmeraie. The pool water is used to irrigate palm trees. The steamrooms collect condensation water around lightwells, allowing water to drip slowly down below and cooling the public space. It is a building is for rich and poor, young and old... the city and the environment.

The project was awared a distinction in Design.

The initial research exercise explored the Medina of Marrakech. It is a speculation about building territories around courtyards and boundaries to neighbours.

The main project is located at the Palmeraie edge. Currently, the Palmeraie is underutilised. Furthermore, informal brick manufacturing and agricultural buildings form a loose and undefined edge between the city and the open palm grove. In addition, adjacent new housing is build entirely in concrete, a material that is highly energy consuming.

The proposal redefines the Palmeraie edge, by allowing both, the city and the palm grove to benefit from the intervention. It is a series of working yards for mud brick manufacturing and other agricultural facilities. Straw from the adjacent fields could be used to enforce the bricks. They will be used as a more sustainable infill in the adjacent housing. The mud bricks will be used instead of concrete bricks within concrete post and beam structures.

The project focuses on the work yards and a pathway system along the Palmeraie edge. The building uses local rammed earth construction, combined with slender concrete post and beam construction. The designs are like tools and allow a strong recognisable identity of the Palmeraie edge.

The project was awarded a distinction in Design, Technical Studies and Professional Studies. Furthermore, it was awarded the Dean's Prize.

The second site is in the old Medina. This part of the city is a close knit meshwork of alleyways and partly neglected courtyard houses, loosely structured around public spaces, such as squares, mosques, palaces, defence systems etc… It has seen increasing building improvements, in recent years. The focus will be around the Tannery community in the east of the Medina.

The work focuses on the largest tannery in the Medina. Heavy pollution and the prospect of moving the tannery process away, pose challanging questions where commonplace thinking might struggle.

The proposal is a tannery research centre that explores alternative and uncommon techniques of tanning and handling leather. The library of the facility is partly accessible to the public.

The building winds along the existing tannery and devides the site into three distinct courtyards - tanning, workshops and wastewater treatment. The library uses leather drying as a means for shading and framing views onto the tanning pots.

The initial design research analysed a facade in masonary construction. Structural and spatial elements leave traces and give a subtle reading of the entire building.

The project in Marrakech is located along a central access spine within the tannery area. Buildings along this important public space are for leather manufacturing and mainly women work here.

As tanneries are in question due to implied health risks, the project is a proposal to enhance working conditions, for men within the tanneries and particularly for women in workplaces along the street frontages. The proposal moves unhealthy processes out of the Medina and enforces leather manufacturing in new entrance buildings.

The proposed entrance building has a more legible access on the ground floor. Nevertheless, it does not allow immediate vistas into the tannery. On the upper floors the proposal acknowledges the need for women's privacy, yet through subtle means, one is able to read the diversity of enhanced workspaces and activities.

The project was awarded a distinction in Design and Professional Studies.

Initial study of masonary facade, drawings and model cast by Peter Dagger

The third site is in the south east of the Medina and is an outcome of a rapid urban growth in the 20th century. The area grew from the medina outwards, since the 1920s. Here the city has been extended with fairly loose planning frameworks in a self build manner. The informal nature of the area resembles the density of the medina, but not its quality.

The urban form of the area could also be described as a ‘Modern Medina‘. Buildings are rarely higher than 3-5 storeys and much smaller than in the Medina. The overall layout is largely informal, build with traditional mud techniques and simple concrete post and beam constructions. There are a few major roads that give the informal layout clearer structure and orientation.

The local population is of lower income and the occupation in the area is rather crafts, small scale manufacturing and service based.

Sidi Youssef - city, street and neighbourhood, by Khedidja Carmody and Ibrahim Buhari

The project is located in the east of Sidi Yousseff, along the boundary to the river Issil. From dense urban fabric, the views open up onto uninterrupted landscape.

As part of a chain of social facilities around the community, the proposal is a school and playground for local children.

Not to interrupt views over the landscape and to protect against the heat, the building is sunken into and coverd by ground. As one walks through the building, an extreme range of courtyard sizes unfold, from lightwells to football grounds. The proposal is a subtle play with issues of privacy that apply less to a building for play.

The area of interest is in the heart of Sidi Yousseff at a crucial cross junction. The design programme is a music school for traditional and contemporary music. It would expand the more lively activities of the west to the less developed east.

The building is located on a very small cluster of disused sites. As such, it is carefully woven into the existing urban grain. The intervention itself is centred on a courtyard, a space that welcomes musicians and visitors alike. The building facade is a three dimensional space that contains diverse services and acoustic devices. On occasions, the building is like a music instrument within the community.