Except than for monuments and sites listed as world heritage, Morocco doesn’t yet have provided to state rules that define and guide the conservation and restoration processes for the historical town centres. The project “Conservation, rehabilitation and valorisation of the traditional earth built heritage” has provided the inspiration for the preparation of a collection of good local construction practices in the historical part of the oasis of Figuig, situated in the Moroccan Oriental Region. Figuig, important carrefour of sub- and trans-Saharian caravan routes since the Middle Ages, has preserved more or less intact the cores of its 7 ksours, Hammam Tahtani, Hammam Foukkani, Laâ Bidate, Loudaghir, Oulad Slimane, El Maïz and the oldest, Zénaga. Built with dense urban fabrics and courtyard houses that lean one on the other making empty spaces follow in a continuous sequence the built ones, Figuig represents like all oasis a system in perfect balance between water supply and land use, a urban aggregate in which man's work, construction and agriculture, profoundly affects the very existence of the settlement. The poor care or even abandonment of the buildings and of the maintenance of the palm grove is only partially the cause of the significant deterioration the oasis is facing today, where approximately one third of the original population has emigrated and the remaining inhabitants aspire to a modernization after a western style model, out of context and dangerously hybridizing historically tested constructive processes. This contribution aims to highlight what are the values of the built fabric of the oasis, of its building traditions, local materials and construction techniques, focusing on the problems that occur more frequently to the technicians responsible for their conservation and show an update on the reasearch that will lead to the definition of guidelines and best practices in order to have a correct conservation and renovation approach.

Elements for the definition of good practices for the conservation and the restoration of the historical urban fabric of a Moroccan pre-Saharan oasis

ACHENZA, MARIA MADDALENA
2012-01-01

Abstract

Except than for monuments and sites listed as world heritage, Morocco doesn’t yet have provided to state rules that define and guide the conservation and restoration processes for the historical town centres. The project “Conservation, rehabilitation and valorisation of the traditional earth built heritage” has provided the inspiration for the preparation of a collection of good local construction practices in the historical part of the oasis of Figuig, situated in the Moroccan Oriental Region. Figuig, important carrefour of sub- and trans-Saharian caravan routes since the Middle Ages, has preserved more or less intact the cores of its 7 ksours, Hammam Tahtani, Hammam Foukkani, Laâ Bidate, Loudaghir, Oulad Slimane, El Maïz and the oldest, Zénaga. Built with dense urban fabrics and courtyard houses that lean one on the other making empty spaces follow in a continuous sequence the built ones, Figuig represents like all oasis a system in perfect balance between water supply and land use, a urban aggregate in which man's work, construction and agriculture, profoundly affects the very existence of the settlement. The poor care or even abandonment of the buildings and of the maintenance of the palm grove is only partially the cause of the significant deterioration the oasis is facing today, where approximately one third of the original population has emigrated and the remaining inhabitants aspire to a modernization after a western style model, out of context and dangerously hybridizing historically tested constructive processes. This contribution aims to highlight what are the values of the built fabric of the oasis, of its building traditions, local materials and construction techniques, focusing on the problems that occur more frequently to the technicians responsible for their conservation and show an update on the reasearch that will lead to the definition of guidelines and best practices in order to have a correct conservation and renovation approach.
2012
978-0-415-62125-0
Conservation; good practices; pre-Saharian Morocco
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11584/90582
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