Somewhere in the middle, tall broom shrubs barely manage to cling to a narrow strip of sandy dirt swept by the northern wind- a rugged scenery, hitherto spared by developers, but threatened like anything that is beautiful and virginal.
Out of these majestic yet fragile surrounds, the villa emerges organically, like an outgrowth of the landscape, both an affirmation and a furtherance of its context. Turning their backs on this life-size postcard, the nearly windowless blocks of the house create their own center of gravity: a central patio reminiscent of the ancestral farmsteads that dot the nearby countryside, complemented by small roofless courtyards and prolonged by a refreshing pool. With the right climate, you don’t need windows to let the sunshine in.
The bedrooms open onto these intimate inner sanctums, while on the other side an elongated volume embeds itself into the sloping ground- a long stone arm to shield the house from both the villagers’ gaze and the wind that skirts the shoreline. Safeguarded by this windbreak stands a mysterious cube whose
external contours don’t seem to match up with its indoor dimensions. It’s through this cube that the landscape enters the house, all the way into the central patio, thus linking the villa to the rough terrain that rolls on westward, the only view that regulations protect from future developments.
With absolute faith in the construction wisdom accumulated by generations of local builders, the villa uses the stones with which the land is strewn for purposes of structure and camouflage, while wood is stretched to its load-bearing limits over the various openings. When these become too wide, as with the two narrow horizontal slits that bisect the living room’s cube from side to side, concrete takes over, like Atlas holding up the sky on his shoulders.
The irregularity of the stones, each bearing witness to the toil of the craftsman who cut it, contrasts with the straight geometry of the blocks that make up this minimalist composition of volumes and hollows. This winter retreat and summer haven is also a modern ode to Morocco and its traditions, seamlessly bridging the gap between the vernacular and the contemporary
