The concept of sustainable development, Assia Lamzah tells us, certainly changes practices — no longer prompting the search for a single, ideal form, but the attainment of the goals to which every territory and…
The concept of sustainable development, Assia Lamzah tells us, certainly changes practices — no longer prompting the search for a single, ideal form, but the attainment of the goals to which every territory and every human community aspires: social cohesion, economic development and environmental balance.
Cities are among the most visible legacies of a civilisation’s culture. Some cities have marked the history of humanity, whether through physical traces still visible or through a literature that recounts their existence: Babylon, Enoch, Athens, Rome, Fez… so many urban creations with very diverse economic, social, anthropological and political mechanics, whose ultimate aim is to ensure individuals a form of security and well-being. In this sense, the City forms the crucible for the emergence of a culture, through the gathering of a community of individuals whose goal is the realisation of a political project. Thus the concept of society, and its adaptation to the context and constraints of the physical and socio-cultural environment, are inseparable from the urban fact.
To grasp the question of sustainable urban development means, among other things, to start from what humanity has built and to sustain its resistance to time while preserving its social, economic, cultural, religious and other “effectiveness.” Indeed, the question of the city’s sustainability is a very old one. The imperative of sustainable development — a notion that must be read critically — introduces new requirements into the production of the city. This work focuses on the relationship between urban and architectural design and sustainable development. In other words: how can design, or rather “Smart Design,” guarantee the sustainability of urban spaces as conceived and lived? Sustainability here is understood in its ecological sense of energy efficiency, rather than in its economic and sociological sense.
Half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas and, by 2050, the number of people living in cities will reach 70%. Moreover, cities are responsible for two-thirds of carbon emissions. The question of urban morphology and design is decisive in this respect.
The challenge of sustainable urban development is considerable. To claim to design an urban space (city, neighbourhood) whose development is sustainable is a task that is not merely complex, but deeply tied to aspects and actors that are not always compatible and do not always work at the same scale. The essential thing in sustainable development, as Scherrer states (in Theys 2000, 22), lies not “in a programme to be prescribed, in a single ideal form, but in a choice of good practices — which places the ways of doing planning and development in the front line.”
Built during the 1990s on an exceptional natural site, the Royal Golf Club of Fez has…
Last Saturday, at the invitation of the magazine “Architecture du Maroc” and the Institut Français of…
The major projects launched across the national territory constitute a powerful engine, apt to foster the…
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