Salima Naji and her Sense of the Land
During the Doha Design Biennial, Arab Design Now, ongoing in Doha in its last week of display, work that draws from the region’s arts, heritage and natural resources, spanning installations at an architectural scale, furniture with a quirk, ornaments and graphic design, were foucssed. Amongst these installations, in the second hall of the exhibition are two large earth pavilions in a style typical of rural adobe architecture in Morocco. This earth-based structure is indicative of anthropologist-cum-architect Salima Naji’s work. We were taken in with this work that connects the dweller to the earth; the profound bond between the dwelling and the environment and the deeper link of soul with materiality. SCALE engaged with Salima Naji for an exclusive interview to know more about her practice, her ideals and the various projects she has been part of.
The trajectory between art, architecture and anthropology is emblematic of Salima’s practice. Her passionate love for land, that combines aesthetics, expertise in building techniques, economy of materials and the desire to work with and involve the inhabitants of the land, all contribute to what we can now call ‘Salima’s Architecture’.
For more than 20 years, Salima Naji, an architect who studied from the Paris La Villette School of Architecture and later took a Doctorate in Social Anthropology from The Ecole Des Hautes etudes En Sciences Sociales in Paris, is spearheading numerous projects of rehabilitation in southern Morocco, using natural materials and local labour.
She has designed, restored or built over 30 bioclimatic buildings in raw earth, stone and other available local material (projects include maternity hospitals, boarding schools, women’s centres, museums, ecolodges or hostels, etc.). In 2004, she founded a studio in Morocco specialising in the innovative use of sustainable raw materials and bio-sourced technologies (earth and stone, palm fibre) and since then her practice coupled with scientific research-based and action-based programmes examine sustainability and the profound relationship between societies and environments.
“The transition to alternative construction methods and processes has become a necessity,” she says emphatically.
She has been a member of the scientific committee of the Berber Museum at the Jardin Majorelle (Fondation Yves Saint-Laurent-Pierre Bergé Marrakech & Paris) since it was set up in 2011. She is developing a major deliberation on cultural mediation and the transmission of heritage, having published a number of works on architecture.
She has published numerous works, both in academic circles and for a wider audience. She has twice been shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2013 and 2022). She was featured in RIBA’s “100 women in practice” in 2023, where of the 100 architects selected worldwide, four were selected from Africa, including Salima from Morocco.
Just recently, Salima was short listed for this year’s Royal Academy Dorfman Prize, London and also won the XIV Prix Européen d’Architecture vernaculaire Philippe Rotthier, prize for revivial of vernacular techniques for the Citadel Kasbah Agadir Oufella project.
Her practice and knowledge in vernacular architecture is immense. She is as bonded to the earth and its people now after multiple projects as she had been from her childhood when she accompanied her father on his trysts with the land of Morocco as a topographer.
“Returning to the wisdom of the ancients will provide us with a strategic vision for the better life of tomorrow in a country that has been exposed to water stress and resource scarcity for far too long. It’s never too late, and we can be sure that these lessons will benefit other regions of the world: a change in the way things are done or built has become a necessity, and not just in the South,” she strongly believes, “Acknowledging the wisdom of our heritage can offer us a strategic vision of a better life for tomorrow, in territories subject to water stress and increasing scarcity of resources.”
Salima views every new build, each new challenge as a learning pad, and that we corroborate as the reason behind her relentless love for earth’s bounty.
Salima views her own installation showcased at the Design Doha Biennale and the process involved of making a new bio-sourced material from Qatar as a revelation because it gave her an opportunity to experience the earth of the land in Qatar.
“The experience that myself, an architect who has been building with adobe, raw bricks, stones and other geo and bio-sourced materials in Morocco for decades, has acquired in Qatar is becoming a laboratory of expression, which is emerging thanks to a benevolent curator, Rana Beiruti, and all those involved in the project at Qatar museums, in particular Fahad Ahmed Al Obaidly,” she says.
We talk to Salima Naji extensively to know more about her projects and her ideals in life.
SCALE: You are an architect who has chosen to work with materials that are abundant on earth. Tell us about your journey in responsible architecture? Tell us more about initial projects and the materials used.
SALIMA: I was born in Rabat to a French mother who had a passion for Morocco and a Moroccan father, a topographer, who passed on to us his sense of the land. We would join him all over the kingdom. This was in the 70’s and 80’s when there were practically no hotels. We slept with locals. He would go to places with no infrastructure and survey, measure and calculate roads, dams and then ports. That’s how I knew the Moroccan territories by heart, which I would later return to survey as part of all my graduate and postgraduate studies in Paris, constantly going back and forth between France and Morocco.
In my early life, I began studying art at secondary school, then realised that the field was too inward-looking. I quickly turned to architecture.
I was involved in medium-term fieldwork since 1993 on the architecture of southern Morocco: Ziz, Tafilalet, Dades and Todgha valleys, the Kasbah road, Dra valleys, Bou Guemmmez, Tessaout, Imeghrane, Skoura. Anthropology and raw earth have always been my interest.
Later when I went on complete my Masters and after that my Doctorate in Anthropology, I would listen avidly to the seminars and visit all the museums and exhibitions, without knowing that this multidisciplinary approach, open to the world and its treasures, was going to have a lasting effect on me.
Then, planning a return to Morocco, I said to myself that I absolutely had to write a thesis on collective granaries. I wanted to find out why the institution of the collective granary still existed in Morocco. That was the question — I spent nearly five years travelling around the mountains, starting to restore collective granaries: because I felt I owed something to the inhabitants of these places who had welcomed me by passing on such noble values, so far removed from the commercialism of the cities.
This approach enabled me to move away from aesthetics and look at practices and, above all, collective goods, or what we now call the ‘commons’. But I never gave up on the idea of interdisciplinary, open sciences, I continued to draw, analyse and reflect to make myself useful, to publish, and I turned to action, what we call action research.
SCALE: Wasn’t helping the collective, the social, a more rigorous task? Is that why you chose Morocco? Why have you always wanted to be useful and help people?
SALIMA: Yes, this isn’t an easy field. All these places, in sites scattered all over southern Morocco, have been schools of knowledge. My training with exceptional teachers in France and Italy taught me that architecture involves both tangible and intangible practices, and today I work a lot in the Gulf: the communities are no longer there, there are certainly monuments, but nobody lives there anymore! Whereas in Morocco we have a living heritage! That’s what I’m still working on today.
And in 2013, when we were shortlisted for the first time for one of the most prestigious architecture prizes, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, our work was recognised among more than 400 projects in the short list of nominees. This citation is the culmination of more than ten years of participative work in the deep south of Morocco, and more specifically the preservation of collective granaries, the rehabilitation of the Ksar of Assa (whose restoration was entrusted to us from 2006 to 2011), and the rescue of the collective parts of the Ksar of Agadir Ouzrou, all part of the same programme in which a similar participative approach was used: on each site, the restoration is initiated with local labour in consultation with civil society.
SCALE: Tell us more about the important work you were involved in which fetched you another Aga Khan nomination?
SALIMA: In 2022, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture jury once again singled out a very important societal project, Issy Valley Improvement, in the Tafraout region, thus nominating us to the list. It’s a very complex project that raises the question of how to rehabilitate public spaces in an oasis environment in the face of severe land constraints. Our work involved a fine-tuned effort to integrate the systems as closely as possible with local practices, using a collaborative approach.
The jury team led by Prince Karim al-Hussaini, also known as Karim Aga Khan IV, who has a passion for architecture and kept a close relationship with the famous architect Hassan Fathy, the director, Farukh Derakhshani, are sensitive to the common good of land, water and community. These people, who have seen regimes collapse, know that today’s most precious asset is people in harmony with their environment. That we have to look after human societies, otherwise there will be unpredictable and highly destructive excesses.
Architects are part of a balanced approach to the world, and they have to stop worrying about aesthetics or architectural prowess alone, and instead integrate our projects into ecosystems where social and environmental constraints have to be reconciled, guaranteeing the best day-to-day experience for the users of the site, with the lowest environmental impact.
The project we were recognised for is one part of a large government-sponsored hydro-agricultural project for the valley.
Of course, I build for private individuals, but above all I devote all the money I earn to financing the rescue of local communities. At the same time, I’m trying to bring these ancestral building practices into the standardised world of public procurement in the Kingdom of Morocco.
SCALE: What are the greatest challenges you face?
SALIMA: Right from the start of my work, I focused on the study of collective granaries and in particular the collective solidarity networks linked to them, because these architectures opened up much more exciting questions about collective adaptation to climatic hazards on a regional scale.
Historical societies are societies of foresight. They teach us the profound links between economy and ecology, with particular care for all forms of life. Today, we need to understand that our societies need to step up crisis prevention by paying close attention to their environment and not by hoping to overcome crises through purely technical means, as this always leads to late action and therefore to having to bear consequences that are often disastrous for the most vulnerable.
We therefore need to convince all the stakeholders that another way forward is possible, and that it is simply the extension of centuries of collective intelligence in which we make the best use of the incredible resources we have, by freeing ourselves from the ineffective categories between modern and traditional (but still active in Morocco).
SCALE: Tell us about the beautiful installation you created for Design Doha 2024. Why did you decide to use mud from the region? Explain the process and the story behind it ?
SALIMA: It was an intense experience that I loved! Because it was always about the unknown: how do you deal with the disappearance of your materials? How do you make new ones?!!!
How do you adapt to a country you don’t know? And relearn everything like a baby. I am thankful to the to the whole team, all of whom were so caring, so present, so stimulating!
Sharing the earth (spatial interiors) was a coming together of raw materials sourced in Doha from the Torba Farm. From clay, adobes, palm trunks, palm and bamboo structures, “jrid” palms and various types of “aqarnif” palms, ashes, plaster and our workers Brahim Sadik, Abdellah Atki and Samih Taibi and workers of Torba farm, Abdul Hakim, Shafaat Abees, Ballal Dali, Khalid Pavaiz, Rashief Mohamed, Cheikh Amad Bakch.
I owe special thanks to Rana Beiruti, Sefa Saglam (Fahad Obaildly), and Mohammed AlKhater, people behind this work.
Two raw earth pavilions, small aediculae with a structure made of woven palm and bamboo fibres, create a series of cocoon-like skins for meditation.
An intelligent work that expresses itself in an extraordinary space and in correspondence with other practices and other materials, a constellation! In this country where everything is reinvented in an extremely old tradition of what was not yet called Design, in this region of the world where extremely determined women are proposing new and multiple paths.
The challenges were immense here too; our containers were lost. In just a few days, we had to start making raw bricks on site. This was made possible at Torba Farm, a centre for endemic crops and environmental awareness near Doha. The owner of the site, Mohamed AlKhater, provided the soil, which is so plastic and easy to work with, and let us take the cut plants, which he stored in a special area of the farm where the adventure began.
5,000 bricks were made on site in just a few days, and the straw was replaced by cut flowers. The structures are assembled in less than ten days. That in itself is an impressive achievement.
SCALE: How do you commit to preserve the environment for tomorrow?
SALIMA: Exactly, as I have said. To create production chains that do not harm the environment, that cultivate the link with our heritages, the material chains that create spaces and a corresponding ethic. To experience the earth and the materials inside. Feeling the materials, caressing them, touching them. Protecting ourselves from the climate, to create shade and feel the gentle breeze of natural ventilation, to put the hand back at the heart of the process and to reaffirm its ontological importance when mechanisation does not always free the human being.
Palm trellises of varying lengths are assembled to filter light and create a protective skin. The hopper has skylights, as in the Sahara, lined with whole palms, still green and just picked, evoking the idea of growth through a material that stretches skywards.
Meditating and rediscovering the atmosphere of an intuitive temple, or an essential mosque of which only the framework remains, that is what I aspire for.
SCALE: Do you see a renewed interest in raw earth today? Is the ecological argument particularly effective? Are customers hard to convince about this construction method?
SALIMA: It is a fact that earth is important. There is a return to essentials and primary values. Raw earth, stone, wood, eco-construction and renewable energies. Today’s generation doesn’t want to consume fossil fuel-guzzling gadgets; they’re thinking in terms of a gentler, low-tech approach. Today’s challenge is to mobilise collective intelligence to overcome future difficulties, not by transposing ready-made solutions but by looking for local solutions. But to do that, we need to have a detailed knowledge of the areas in which we work (hence the importance of heritage as a vector for reflection, not just as a token word).
Eco-building means understanding a society in all its complexity and taking into account all the parameters: environmental (geology, climate, plant cover, etc.); economic (productive activities, household incomes, public authority funding capacities, etc.); social (demographic structures, population growth, ageing, family structures, the place of young people and children, gender approach, etc.) and cultural (daily practices, festive practices, imagination, desires, etc.).
This is how I have tried to build in the provinces where I’ve been given permission, notably in the provinces of Tiznit (where I live), Tata, Guelmim Oued Noun and Agadir Idaw Outanane: around 30 buildings made of earth and stone have been delivered to prove this and spread the word.
We can no longer adopt a method that destroys the world on the pretext of being ‘modern’ when temperatures are rising and water is becoming scarcer! In Saudi Arabia, they are building a city out of raw earth, and their laboratories are producing all kinds of innovative, bioclimatic materials. In Arles, the Luma Foundation has promoted adapted biotechnologies from the region: salt, reprocessed seaweed, Camargue rice fibres and so on. This is what we need to promote for tomorrow: the local, reinvested, thoughtful and a concern for the common good, for others and for the world.
SCALE: Why do you use earth or stone, and not concrete?
SALIMA: Technical solutions that are imported and transposed without thought to regions with limited resources and marked by climatic extremes not only propose an inadequate model but also marginalise practices and extinguish a specific memory and history. Integrating local – not imported – materials is therefore considerably more ethical than continuing to carbonise the world, and we need to offer an alternative by putting communities back at the heart of the construction process, and thus re-establishing the transmission between generations.
Cement concrete led to a metabolic breakdown at the end of the 1970s. Almost a century after it was first developed. I’m in favour of adaptability and durability, not against a material in the form of a posture. I’m not against this material. In fact, I use it, of course, but only sparingly if I can’t do otherwise. But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that this material is a very recent choice. An extremely useful material for major road infrastructures, large dams and multi-storey buildings, but unsuitable for local projects.
Firstly, it has a very high ecological and economic cost, as it requires an enormous amount of fossil fuels for its construction, maintenance, air conditioning and destruction. Economically, it requires energy imports and therefore a trade deficit. Finally, it is capital-intensive, rather than labour-intensive, at a time when Morocco’s labour force participation rate is falling steadily. If you add to this the fact that cement concrete is often used to conceal faulty workmanship, and that today we are having to demolish thousands of cement buildings that are in danger of collapse…
By promoting raw earth (pisé, adobes or super-adobes, blocks of compressed earth) or stone, in mixed materials, we are adopting a more ethical stance. By developing materials towards technological innovation, we are also ethically faultless and this is a trend that is spreading everywhere at the moment.
SCALE: You had directed the bigger project of the Agadir Kasbah. What were the challenges of this operation ?
SALIMA: An exceptional peninsula overlooking a port structure adapted to international trade, the fortress of Agadir embodied more than six centuries of the importance of this port at the mouth of the great continental routes linking the Sahara and Europe, Africa and Asia. The site, classified as a Moroccan historic monument in 1932, is a painful place of memory, constantly reminding the inhabitants of the tragic night of 29 February 1960 when a devastating earthquake hit Agadir. Sixty years after the terrible earthquake, the Kingdom decided to breathe new life into this emblematic site of Moroccan history by complying with international protocols for post-disaster heritage interventions in order to open the site up to visitors. In parallel with the excavations and the gradual restoration of the monument, a participatory approach was put in place for two years with the survivors and the bearers of memory. The restoration of the walls, the elevation of the visitor routes with flooring inside the fortress, and the reorganisation of accesses, offer a heritage restoration that opens up the site to visitors and to the collective memory.
To ensure that only the fortress emerges at the top of the hill, all the services are located underground: the site of the visitor centre includes a cable car, restaurants, an information point, toilets and areas dedicated to visitor safety.
The nine-metre height required to operate the cable car’s machines justified the choice of a ramp to house all the services in two buildings spread across the slope of the hill. This underground platform forms the nodal point of a traffic plan where the different modes of transport meet without clogging up the site with cars (public transport route, redevelopment of pedestrian walkways on historic access points, panoramic cable car).
The construction system of treated wood and 80 cm dry stone is based on an earthquake-resistant method used in the High Atlas (Ait Bou Guemmez Valley, Morocco) and in other regions of the world (Nepal, Pakistan, Himalayas).
The wall is erected on a foundation of BA (peripheral footings) and then the walls are gradually built horizontally, course by course, by laying alternating layers of dry stone masonry and timber, without any mortar.
The stone filler material is masonry, while the outer and inner walls are held together by wooden braces.
This arrangement, which consists of alternating stone and wood, adds flexibility not only for building purposes, but also in the event of earthquakes, where it has been proven to absorb the effects of shearing, and thus responds intelligently to seismicity standards.
In the eyes of some decision-makers, building with earth is not professional enough, using wood or stone generally scares them, they want metal, solid or concrete. On the contrary, for me, the question of reinvesting in places that have proved their worth in the past and the techniques that go with them, is an immense opportunity to renew the building and public works sector in Morocco, an opportunity that is too good to pass up. You have to be able to invent, and tradition is just a series of reinventions.
Returning to the wisdom of the ancients will provide us with a strategic vision for the better life of tomorrow in a country that has been exposed to water stress and resource scarcity for far too long. It’s never too late, and we can be sure that these lessons will be of benefit to other regions of the world: a change in the way things are done or built has become a necessity, and not just in the South.
Short Bites:
Other hobbies:
I go bodysurfing and I live by the ocean, which helps me recharge my batteries, somewhere between an oasis and the Atlantic Ocean.
Architects on the same path who guide you…
Hassan Fathy, Zaha Hadid drawings, Peter Zumthor, Xu Tiantian, Marina Tabassum, Toshiko Mori, Kerstin Thompson, …
Favourite building in Qatar
The M7 district in its connection with the built complex of archives and ministry and buildings is a marvel of urbanistic intelligence. What I liked most in Doha was to walk from the riverbanks to the park sites. I walked a lot.