Morocco

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Mophosis Architects have just released their design for the Casablanca Finance City tower in Morocco. The building's iconic crown, coupled with the way the building interacts with ground-level public space, creates an "inverted double-crown" that will serve as social symbol and meeting place. Following the model set in Paris' La Defense district, the project will anchor a new business district (Casablanca Finance City) and embody "Morocco’s vision for the future and setting precedents in building performance, scale, and style for a city that does not yet exist." Slated for completion in 2017, the 226,042 sq. ft building broke ground in December of 2014.

Read on to learn more about Morphosis' brise-soleil-wrapped tower. 

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Flohara by XTU Architects envisions an inhabitable desert wall that constructs itself from the natural processes of its environment. Featured at the Venice Biennale's Morocco Pavilion exhibition entitled “Fundamental(ism)s,” this ecological phenomenon defies the conventions of housing, offering shelter from varying climatic conditions and supporting both human and plant life in the harsh desert.

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Videos

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Herreros Arquitectos just sent us their recent project for a mixed-use building in Casablanca, Morocco. Resulting from a series of urban, spatial, formal and sustainable variables, the project--which includes housing, commercial and athletic spaces--is characterized by a permeable facade that directly responds to the climate. The repeated decorative element is a reinterpretation of a traditional geometric code that is common to the region.

The project was featured in the Moroccan Pavilion in the 2014 Venice Biennale. Find the images and product description, after the break.

Silvio d’Ascia Architecture, Omar Kobité Architecture and Eric Giudice Architects have been announced as winner of an international competition to design the new TGV high-speed railway station in Kénitra. The winning design aims to unite the northern and southern parts of the city by providing two entryways joined by one geometrical volume whose triangular framework recalls traditional shapes found in vernacular Moroccan architecture.

Maison Edouard François has masterplanned a new mixed-use neighborhood for the Moroccan city Casablanca: “The Gardens of Anfa.” Scheduled for completion in 2017, the plan calls for three mid-rise residential towers, a low-rise office tower, and a series of residential blocks connected by a central piazza and concealed within a lush multicolored landscape. Each “organically-shaped” tower will be enhanced by a trellised facade that fosters the growth of bougainvilleas and jasmine, further camouflaging the structure and “demarcating the limits of a garden.”

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