Contextualizing Toumliline : Landscape + Existing Site
Spring 2021 | critics: Karen Van Lengen, FAIA + Alexander YuenDocumentation: Understanding the site
Surveying document and archival source images courtesy of H.E. Lamia Radi, President of Memoires Pour l'Avenir
The thesis site sits in the Middle Atlas range an hour south of Fes, the religious center of Morocco. It is embedded in the hills framing the valley of Azrou, a city of 80,000 with a strong Indigenous historical character.
Sited on a mountaintop plateau, the land has a commanding view of the Fes-Meknes region below. Once guarding the only road out to the Sahara, the site was a French legionary military post, then a school for troubled boys of colonizers, and finally the site of the monastery.
Fruit trees are well suited to Morocco’s climate, including the particularly lucrative argan, a symbol of the kingdom. Above the monastery complex are freshwater and geothermal springs. The site’s spine is a colonnade, which begins as a path from the front gate and culminates as the cloister. Traditional tents were installed for summer youth summits. These are the pieces of architecture I responded to directly.
Thesis Phases
