Architects: Marco Dellavalle, Lorenzo Bartoletti

Category: Urban design

Date: 2012

City: Essaouira (Morocco)

Tags: Building, residential, patio, openness

Building/Architecture

The complex of villas nestles on the coast looking out over the ocean and reinterpreting the concept of the private enclave, inside which the elements of the house are arranged, albeit with strong connections with the outside.

The model studied is enclosed by a low wall in accordance with tradition. Like the Roman domus and many other Mediterranean houses, the villa is concentrated around a central patio crossed by two paths. The first leads from the entrance to the interior, serves the external parking space, skirts and supports the swimming pool looking out towards the sea, and separates the living area from the rest of the house. The second runs through the house from north to south, defines the other side of the patio, crosses the living area and leads to a balcony with a view of the sea. The two paths ensure the centrality of the patio and the divisions between inside and outside disappear in the continuous interplay of open, closed and covered parts, thus discovering how architecture can be enriched with new possibilities thanks to climate.

The external volumes are rational in their compositional simplicity and so are the interiors, designed in accordance with the Acanto philosophy combined with local tradition material and furnishings.

The villas constitute an experimental project whose aim is to rationally blend Moroccan traditions with modern architecture, dysplaing great respect for the light and the landscape to be seen all around.