Facing The Mountains

On the outskirts of Marrakech, a collective farm offers its residents a simple respite from city life   Thirty kilometres south of Marrakech, the road that leads from the red city to the foothills of the Atlas Mountains passes through Tahanaout, a picturesque village set against the majestic backdrop of the High Atlas. For decades, it has been one of the many small and isolated countryside villages whose incomes rely mostly on agriculture and cattle farms.   Nowadays, surrounded by olive groves and orange trees, Tahanaout enthralls foreign visitors with its handmade rugs, landscape and architecture: typical red clay constructions built according to traditional Berber techniques. In 2003, three of the most famous painters in Morocco, including Mahi Binebine, decided to create Al Maqam residency to live and work together in the village. Since then, Al Haouz province's capital and its 7,000 inhabitants have become the centre of a rich cultural life, a place where both artists and architects are experimenting with new forms of expression. No doubt ‘Co-habitation’ is one of the most exciting projects in Tahanaout's modern history.   Designed by the Casablanca and Paris-based Kilo Architectures, founded by the architect couple Linna Choi and Tarik Oualalou, Co-habitation consists of five experimental houses within a collective farm, a 2,000 square metre complex that proposes alternative modes of domesticity and co-habitation, both within the home and between homes. The project started in 2008 with one single intention: to build a place where friends and their children would be able to grow up together.   ‘At that time, we were working a lot on the schéma directeur of Marrakech, but we pulled out, it was very complicated,’ says Oualalou. ‘There is a typical attraction to Marrakech, which is a very international city. We decided to find a good place on the outskirts and bought a vacant piece of land in Tahanaout, with five families that all have ties in Morocco but live in different places like Paris or Hong Kong.’   ‘It is a very particular project, we had never done community houses like this. That’s why Co-habitation excited us. It was not about the land, it was about creating an artificial family,’ adds Choi. So far three houses have been completed and two more are planned. With between five and six bedrooms, each house has its guest bedrooms in separate pavilions which function as independent units and as part of the greater whole of the project.   What strikes the visitor when looking at the site is the linearity of the project. Facing the mountains, surrounded by orchards and a vegetable garden, two houses are sited along a 160 metre line and each house disappears from the visual sight line of the other. ‘To have equal access to the mountain view without seeing the other houses, we create a sense of privacy not through enclosure but through a lack of visual proximity,’ says Oualalou.   The two extremities of the line house private spaces for reflection - an architectural studio for one building and a yoga studio for the other. As one moves towards the middle, the spaces become increasingly more public and social, with the centre occupied by the guest quarters for the two houses (thus allowing one family to ‘colonise’ the guest quarters of the other house if needed). In each house, all the spaces benefit from a double orientation to the two different orchards.   While interior and exterior spaces flow into each other, the occupants move around the houses and the garden according to the time of day, as if the houses functioned as a sundial. ‘We love the fluidity between the indoor and outdoor spaces in all the houses,’ says Choi. ‘From facing the stunning mountain view in the morning sun for an early coffee, to reading in one of the shaded courtyards during midday, or having a sunset drink with friends with the distant lights of Marrakech in the background, everyone develops a unique circuit around the houses.’   Even if the houses are made of concrete and have a very contemporary style, equal attention was paid to traditional materials and local colours. The Marrakech region is famous for its ‘red’ earth, and Choi and Oualalou used an adobe finish for the façade made of earth from the site. This is what gives the houses their unique colour. ‘The walls of all of the houses are extremely thick for thermal mass, thereby keeping the houses cool during the day and warm at night. The houses are sunny but sheltered, sheltered but open to the sky, shaded but breezy, responding to the climactic conditions of this near-desert locale as well as to the changing whims of its occupants,’ says Oualalou.   In Co-habitation everything is collective. The budget is communal and the vegetables grown in the farm are shared by all the residents. The project is also involved in the local community. The farm not only employs six men from Tahanaout, but also provides food for the animals. ‘Once a week, the women from the village come to the farm and take the weeds as food for donkeys and mules,’ says Choi. ‘We have a symbiotic relationship with the land and the people. Before, there was silence, no animals, now there are birds and a real ecosystem.’   Since the completion of the three houses in 2011, the occupants have tried to make it back to the farm once every one or two months and during school holidays. ‘The kids are the biggest fans of the houses. They love being able to run around the farm, picking fruits and vegetables and splashing in the pools, as well as the impromptu barbecues over open fires, and the general “slowness” of rural living,’ says Oualalou.   For the last few months, Choi, Oualalou and the other residents have also been engaged in a new activity: making organic olive oil from the trees of the farm. ‘So far, it’s been an artisanal production given to friends and family as gifts,’ says Choi. ‘But we hope to market the oil soon!’   Photography: Jean Denis Joubert