Situated on a desert plateau, this project blends sustainability with local culture and landscapes. Inspired by traditional farming, it uses swales, furrows, and “bowls” to manage water naturally. Cultural features include dry stone walls, a scaled map of Morocco, and a Berber tent showcasing regional agriculture and crafts. A plant nursery near Rabat focuses on land restoration with native species. By integrating nature-based solutions and local traditions, this innovative design supports communities, preserves the environment, and redefines industrial site landscaping with resilience and cultural depth.
Situated on a stony, desert plateau, great importance was given to the site's landscaping with an emphasis on sustainable local development. While access to the site is restricted for obvious reasons, it is still open for visits by different interest groups, and the developmental approach looked out towards local communities in the adjacent oasis valleys. A large part of the landscape project evolved out of studying the way people live and worked and farmed in adjoining valleys. The project remains an example of landscape architecture rooted in its local context and refreshingly different from the current trends in Morocco.
While using nature-based solutions inspired by observation of natural processes on the site resulted in planted swales, furrows and “bowls” crafted into the gentle slope, another important part was the cultural, regenerative and social component. Built by local artisans, dry stone walls, spirals built in rammed earth and pergolas with poplar wood beams formed cultural elements in the reproduction of a map of Morocco at a small scale. A sculpted swale defined the Atlantic and Mediterranean borders. They were quickly occupied by local grasses and spontaneous vegetation after the first rainy season. Similarly, the act of simply tilling the hard earth in the tampon spaces between power stations,enabled natural grasses to spring up, the seeds being able to germinate through the water trapped in the furrows during an episode of rain.
Representing Ouarzazate on the scaled down map, a representation of an oasis to show caselocal practices of permaculture in the nearby valleys was laid out. A Berber tent to sample traditional mint tea, see henna painting or witness typical agricultural cycles through the production of cereals (mainly wheat), saffron, mint, henna, and other traditional aromatic and tinctorial plants were installed to show visitors the local context and to provide employment to locals.
To celebrate the capital, Rabat, which had been recently declared a “Ville Verte”as part of Unesco’s World Heritage programme, a plant nursery was created with the objective of being not only a research station, but a site to produce local plants not available in other nurseries, and local species appropriate forrepairing the damaged land in proximity to the site.
Other towns earmarked to host future solar energy power stations were represented with mirrors reflecting the wider natural landscape and the viewer all in one scene. Midelt, for example was placed on top of an area of fill of five to six metres in height and representing the Atlas Mountains.
Landscaping on this scale in an industrial site of such importance has proved to be not only innovative, but also resilient and compatible with the local surrounding landscape. No green carpets in this desert!