Building Office, Commerce, Hotel
Rabat, Morocco
2016
The particular position of the city, its geographical location on the west coast towards the ocean, its orography marked by rocky cliffs, its hilly territory crossed by the river, have always characterized Rabat's identity.
If originally, in the twelfth century, the city is only Ribat Fath, the Fort of Victory, the military fort that marked the starting point of the armies that embarked on Spain. In the following centuries
and until the 19th century, urban development led to the establishment of an imperial city surrounded by great walls.
The nature of these works, their chromatic aspect, the particular way of anchoring themselves to the ground still express the will to merge the work in its landscape, to constitute a strong relationship between the building and the nature of the place.
The walls of the medina on the rocks, the Kasbah of Oudayas, the Chellah, the mosque and tower Hassan, the mausoleum of Mohammed V, the white quarters connected by wide alleys and green spaces express this ability and willingness to dissolve the city in its natural territory .
The site, thanks to its location at the entrance to the city, near the ocean, on the edge of the green belt, forms the gateway to the new district on the Abderrahim Bouabid avenue and represents an opportunity to create a "landmark" architecture , which becomes a reference and central point in this peripheral area south of the city.
The foundations of tradition, the attachment to physical and landscape nature, its materials, shapes and colors, the articulation between large-scale territorial elements and urban fabric
from the white architecture, it has inspired our choices, to ensure the right synthesis between contemporaneity and tradition.
A quartz geode, ocher land of Morocco, contains in its inner cavity a plurality of white crystals. This stone is a reference, the best example of the synthesis sought between places, materials, form, geometric structure, color, purity and beauty.
A beauty that surprises for the contrast between matter and color between the inside and the outside, for the complexity of its forms and its constitution, for the clarity of the suggestions it offers, all elements that refer to articulation and balance which constitute the particular beauty of the city of Rabat and the way it is made up.
architectural design: Quattroassociati
cabinet Sad Benkirane
arch. Paolo Emilio Colao
Studio CDM Architetti Associati