Some months ago The View from Fez ran a story about Aziza Chaouni, the Aga Khan Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Aziza and her colleagues drew up a plan to rehabilitate the Chouarra tanneries by closing them and turning the area of the pits into public space. The famous pits would be transformed into planters for flowers - see story here. TANNERIES PLAN
Now we can pass on the news that the design has won a major award - the Gold Holcim Award. The gold award includes a cash prize of $300,000
Almost 5,000 sustainable construction projects and visions from 121 countries entered the five regional Holcim Awards competitions in 2008. Winners of the Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards in each region automatically qualified for the Global Holcim Awards competition in 2009. The global jury was headed by Charles Correa (architect, India) and included Peter Head (structural engineer, UK), Enrique Norten (architect, Mexico/USA), Saskia Sassen (sociologist, USA), Hans-Rudolf Schalcher (civil engineer, Switzerland), and Rolf Soiron (economist, Switzerland).
Gold Award: River remediation and urban development scheme, Fez, Morocco / John Ferri, Takako Tajima, Aziza Chaouni, Dan Brunn.
The View from Fez congratulates Aziza and her colleagues.
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
6 comments:
Can you explain what this means? Is the project going ahead, are the tanneries going to actually be redeveloped etc., or is this just all an intellectual project and a study of what could be?
Here is what the architect has to say:
Aziza responds
It still doesn't answer the question, is the project procedding as planned or not? If you don't know, just say you don't know.
Thanks so much for that, though its still not all completely clear to me -- but I will email her and find out more.
Congratulations! This is a fantastic, historical area in need of assistance. Thanks for illustrating the process. As well, it's nice to see a Canadian involved in the project :)
The general feeling here is that moving the tanneries is inevitable. What is in question is - is this the best plan? Many people think that they should not be moved - not matter what the environmental damage being caused. I hope that is clear enough!
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