Morocco will host its first pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Curated by the Foundation FADA’ (Fondation pour l’Art, le Design, et l’Architecture) and directed by architect Tarik Oualalou, the concept for the Moroccan pavilion will be based upon Morocco’s role as an urban and architectural laboratory in the twentieth century. The project, entitled “Fundamental(ism)s,” will be organized in two parts:
The first part of the exhibition is composed of a historical exploration exhibiting ten projects (one per decade). The ten selected projects will showcase the significant architectural research which occurred in Morocco around the theme of the traditional city and focus on how the idea of the “medina” served as the origin of many radical architectural and urban projects throughout the century, both constructed and speculative.
The second part of the exhibition will focus on territorial speculations in the Western Sahara. Absent from the architectural discourse in Morocco, the Western Sahara, with its extreme geography and climactic conditions, remains an unexplored territory for architectural speculation. The unique geography of the Western Sahara and its position as a territory at the ‘limits,’ in a climactic, social, and political sense, demands that architects question how to integrate architectural and infrastructural solutions into such a marginalized territory. Several interdisciplinary teams will propose speculative projects which address the question of how to appropriate this territory and to create vehicles of inhabitation in this inhospitable environment.
Information via the Foundation FADA.
