Marrakech: Guéliz - Architecture in Peril

Marrakech is a Moroccan city known for its “Medina” heritage, playing the role of the international window of traditional Moroccan architecture. However, there is a “recent" yet underrated type of the city’s heritage, The New city of Gueliz. This zone constituted the basis of the colonial regime’s perspective of a modernist city in Marrakech during the protectoral era (1912-1956). Gueliz’s conception created an element of rupture in the city’s urban planning separating the old (Traditional Medina) from the New (City). This has led to the critical situation of the city's current master plan: rupture vs interdependency with the past. In this framework, the aim of the research presented in this paper is a study of the "colonial building" in today’s city, its impact from the architectural, urban, social to the urban dimension. The main results showed inappropriate transformations of the buildings concerned, which very often lead to their demolition. For this reason, the paper questions the position of these buildings from a sustainable urban planning perspective. The research is deepened by analyzing case studies of the concerned buildings in order to understand and then to provide the right intervention guidelines scenarios : whether an adaptive reuse intervention is the answer, if not, how to profit from the operation of the demolition as a last solution scenario by considering the building as a material bank. The analysis work is based on thematic surveys and restitution with HBIM tools, in order to define recovery and enhancement strategies for the future building on an urban scale.