Moroccan Architect Champions Sustainable Earth Construction, Reviving Traditional Building Techniques

Born in Rabat to a Moroccan father and a French mother, Salima Naji grew up in Kenitra and often spent her vacations in the Tarn, with her maternal grandparents. She discovered these "living practices of raw earth" in 1995, during a trip to Mali. "I stayed in the Dogon country, in Gao, Djenné, Ségou, and I realized that a tradition, even moribund as was the case then for the casbahs and ksours of the Drâa and Dadès that I was studying, can wake up at any time... We wanted to believe in an abandonment, yet in many African countries, vernacular architecture remains vibrant. I am thinking in particular of all those mud mosques around the fertile valley of the Niger," she confides to Marie Claire.

And she adds: "The interest of these regions of the world is that they are not yet contaminated by the normalization and standardization of the construction industry. All the countries in the world are decarbonizing and we, we want concrete and more concrete. It’s easier to build in cement, any idiot can do it; in raw earth, we need master masons who have to be paid. But if at first the concrete house costs a little less, once the insulation, the finishes, the insane air conditioning are added, it is ultimately more expensive. Today, we want architectures that last 60 years, the time of a life; earth architectures, they can last for centuries if they have been well built and maintained."

For the Franco-Moroccan woman, these traditional methods "are the product of several centuries of empirical innovations to overcome, with limited means, climatic or epidemiological hazards." She recommends trying to "improve" this "millennial architecture" rather than finding fault with it.