Technology Crafts

Inhabiting the Desert: Boucraa, an Invisible City

Venice, Italy

Venice Biennale 2014, Morocco Pavilion

Research
2022
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The Drapery of the Territory: Our project explores the traces left by mining exploitation in Boucraa, a Saharan city located 100 km southeast of Laâyoune. It aims to transform and revitalize these traces, creating the necessary conditions for habitation through a regenerative process of re-naturalizing the exploited land.

He inhabits the drapery of folds, fractures, and hollows—remnants of raw mineral extraction—reclaiming a landscape of artificial hills and furrowed earth, marked by mining activity. The project reshapes the terrain and reimagines the topography, bringing to life spaces once deemed impossible or unthinkable—open to the sky, the sun, and the moon, yet embedded in the earth like a star-shaped network, a textured weave of solid forms and empty spaces that evoke the vision of an invisible city.

NWe identify different landscape conditions, each to be reclaimed, inhabited, and experienced.

  • Fault lines in the terrain, where we carve out pockets and folds directly into the earth, transforming them into topoi—open-air living spaces around which dwellings take shape.
  • Artificial hills and furrowed land, sunken below the natural ground level, rewilded and greened to create a prairie—a new oasis for the city. Some dunes will be reimagined as spaces for communal activities.
  • Lookouts on the horizon, punctuating the landscape like gateways to the city—defining vantage points from which the desert’s vastness can be fully perceived.

The Experience of Boundaries
Boucraa emerges as an invisible city, embedded within the earth’s meandering depths, following the artificial topography shaped by mining.
Interwoven with the archaeology of traces, it unfolds like a delicate rock lace of folds and hollows, oriented toward the landscape below the hills and furrows. It remains hidden, revealed only through its gateways—turret-like balconies that open onto the vast horizon.
This unseen city, sculpted from layered folds and cascading fault lines, anchors itself in the terrain and geography, forging a desert habitat in continuity with troglodyte dwellings. It reclaims the Edenic essence of oases through lush, planted gardens nestled within the dunes, evoking an “ecological bliss” wrested from the extremes of the desert.

Inhabiting the Earth – A Nearly Neutral Environmental Footprint
Living within the earth reconnects us to the origins of habitat, fostering a harmonious relationship with the surrounding environment. Thermally, the earth serves as a natural buffer, insulating the dwellings from temperature fluctuations and providing a stable climate throughout the year.
Carved into the ground, these homes benefit from inherent protection, maintaining comfortable hygrothermal conditions. The earth itself functions as a thermal regulator—an insulating and protective layer that ensures optimal living conditions with minimal environmental impact.

Inhabiting the Desert: Boucraa, an Invisible City