The architectural styles, majestic residences and traditional interior design of Morocco still inspire today, attracting luminaries and celebrities of the day. In particular, the Moroccan traditional house, designed around an interior courtyard, is fuelling a stylish new mood and look in home architecture and design, writes Jack Black for Articlet.com.

History and Styles

Moroccan architecture is an eclectic, even cosmopolitan cultural blend that reflects its long and rich history. Morocco’s indigenous people are the Berbers, who farmed the land from at least 2000 BC. Subsequent rulers and invaders included Arabians, the Spanish, the Portuguese and, in recent, colonial times, French occupiers. (Morocco was declared a French protectorate in 1912, the same year as Matisse’s visit.) In the Moroccan cities, the medina, or old city, sits alongside the boulevards of the adjacent French-style towns, built by the colonisers as part of development efforts in the earlier twentieth century.

The oldest architecture in Morocco includes ancient fortified citadels (kasbahs) and villages (ksars), mostly located in and around the Atlas Mountains. These are of a style dubbed ‘Southern Kasbah’. Made of sun-dried brick, these towering forts, many later turned into palaces, boast simple lines. Despite their massiveness, they still seem to blend seamlessly with their environments. Though many are now ruined, some have found new life as film sets for Hollywood movies. The romance of the kasbah was immortalised in the famous 1942 film set in Morocco’s largest city: Casablanca.

Moroccan Islamic architecture, incorporating elements of African traditional buildings and materials, arose after Islam spread across North Africa in the later 7th century AD. The dominant Moroccan architectural style, Hispano-Moorish, dates to around the eleventh century AD, when the indigenous Berber peoples, who had adopted Islam after the Arab conquest, came to power. Berber dynasties would rule Morocco and large parts of Spain for the next four centuries. The Hispano-Moorish architectural style originated in Spain (in Andalusia), and was taken across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco at the behest of the ruling Berber Almoravid dynasty. The Almoravids sent Spanish artisans to Morocco, where they introduced the graceful arches and lofty domes that, along with white walls and green stucco roofs, have become hallmarks of the Hispano-Moorish style.

From the 11th to 15th centuries, Moroccan art and architecture enjoyed a golden age, flourishing under successive Berber dynasties. Initially, buildings tended to sport simple, plain exteriors but were lavishly decorated inside with geometric designs, floral patterns and the like. By the fifteenth century, the style had evolved to include ornately embellished exteriors, on mosques, medersas (religious schools) and other public architecture. That these elaborate patterns were perfected as a high art form owes something to Islam’s prohibition of figural imagery, especially humans and animals, in religious art. (Such figures were not, however, forbidden in the home, as is often thought. Figurative images adorned items such as carpets, for example). Morocco’s splendid mosques with their soaring minarets from where the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, the medina’s ancient streets, the ornamented palaces, and the warrens of the kasbahs still enchant visitors. It is, however, the design and style of the traditional Moroccan house, or riad, that has especially captured the twenty-first century imagination.

Traditional Living: the Restoration of the Riads

Tucked into the spaces between older buildings in Morocco’s historic ancient cities, are scores of traditional houses, both large and small, that as recently as ten years ago were decaying and neglected, used for storage and as animal pens. Renovation of these once gracious homes has proceeded apace and they are now highly sought-after properties.

The basic riad floor plan is plain and geometrically precise, consisting of rooms surrounding a central open-air courtyard. If the design is reminiscent of Roman villas, that is because the origins of the riad floor plan are thought to date to Roman times. Roman remains at Volubilis , a Roman administrative centre in Morocco, are often cited as the riad’s architectural antecedent, later adapted for African conditions. The riad layout provides shade and shelter from the African heat and dust, the central courtyard a peaceful oasis, lush with plants and cooled by fountains and pools. The name ‘riad’ derives from the Arabic word for a garden.

With the rise of Islam, the riad design came in useful in another way, providing private family spaces, insulated from the bustle and commerce of the city beyond. The garden provides a contemplative, unspoilt and almost sacred space. The design, with its rows of arches around a rectangular garden, recalls that historically unrelated place, the convent cloister, where the devout could pursue their devotions without the distractions of the world outside.

Yet it is also a social space, the true heart of the home. All rooms in the traditional riad open onto this atrium, and it is where the visitor passing through the heavy, carved wooden door from the street would find himself on admittance. As with the Almoravid architecture of nearly a millennium ago, the plain face that a building presents to the public world gives way to an interior space that is intricately and lovingly decorated. Exterior windows in the riad are small, high or absent, minimising intrusions from the street. It is like passing from a wilderness outside to an inner sanctum that is a showcase for civilised taste, culture and learning. In the heyday of the Moroccan empire, that is precisely what the Islamic cities were famous for. In the earlier 2nd millennium AD Islamic cities across Africa (such as the legendary Timbuktu) were renowned centres of knowledge: in science, astronomy, mathematics, engineering and medicine. The riad seems to be a microcosm of the world in which it evolved.

The appeal of the riad’s inward-directed design for people today, and for contemporary lifestyles and tastes, is clear. Security with style, in a space that combines seclusion with sociability is a winning combination. The courtyard garden organically blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors. It is the ideal contemporary garden, a place designed for people as much as it is a place of nature.

The architectural details of the typical riad interior clearly reveal the powerful Islamic influence at work in the design. The elegant archways that flank the atrium echo the mihrab, the prayer alcove in a mosque’s qibla wall (a wall oriented towards Mecca). The arches’ form exemplifies the fusion of opposites in which Islamic architecture excels: straight lines softened by the sinuous curve; or solid, straight mosque walls, topped by domes that seem to rest above as lightly as a hat.

Islamic Art and Interior Design

The intricate decorative work that characterises Islamic art, from Africa across Europe to Asia, combines flowing lines with precision draughtsmanship and craftsmanship. Friezes in Arabic calligraphy that celebrate verses from the Qu’ran, or flower patterns and other motifs, form rich designs that offset the more rigid geometry of the floor plan. Every surface of the built environment invited decoration of some kind. One of the marvels of the Hispano-Moorish style is that attention to detail was applied with equal dedication and skilful effect to both small domestic dwellings and large town buildings.

Precision design and highly developed craftsmanship characterise many Moroccan arts and crafts, amongst them ceramic tiles made to adorn every surface: floors, walls, and ceilings, indoors and outdoors. Here again is mathematical skill, used to generate intricate and meticulously symmetrical geometric patterns. The patterns appear also in wood carving, with extraordinary workmanship displayed in the ornamentation of architectural wonders like Marrakech’s Bahia Palace. In the ceramic tiles, known as zellige, we can glimpse some of the glorious colour that would have struck Matisse a century ago and that now strikes a chord with contemporary designers.

Colour, glowing bright or warm and earthy, is a crucial dimension of the charm of Moroccan style. It is not something added on to Moroccan architecture, but integral to it. Interior walls are traditionally painted using natural earth pigments. Iron, cobalt and other minerals endow the paints with deep and subtle colour: red, orange, yellow and blue. Rugs in complementary bright, yet earthy, colours add richness and texture to floors. Warm indigenous woods, like cedar wood, frame the doors and alcoves. Forget the dull, rectangular doors that we’re accustomed to: Moroccan doors are finely sculpted or ornamented with ornate metalwork forged by master craftsmen. Great care and fine detailing was often lavished on the front door, which fitted snugly into a horseshoe-shaped arch. These doors too might feature the traditional repeating patterns that adorn the mosques, schools and domestic interiors. Moroccan handmade lamps, in stained glass or in metal and leather, are renowned world-wide amongst designers and those in the know about cutting edge trends in interior décor and international style trends.

The visual effect is extraordinarily modern: a blend of cheerful and subtle tones, cosmopolitan style with an ethnic flavour, and all pervaded by an organic and eco-friendly ambience. It is little wonder that as well as designers, Morocco’s buildings have attracted architects. Especially in Marrakech and Essaouira, riads have been snapped up, often by foreigners. They are rescued from ruin, renovated and relaunched, catering for the tourists who are all-important to Morocco’s economy. Some riads have become restaurants; many offer accommodation, from humble bed and breakfast establishments to upmarket hotels. Some restorations have featured in prestigious architectural journals.

Neo-Moroccan Architecture

The revival of the riads is one way in which Morocco’s traditions persist. Marrakech in particular has a reputation as something of a landmark on the contemporary international style and design map and architects are creating new buildings by reinterpreting traditional architecture. The contemporary style known as Neo-Moroccan synthesises Morocco’s two principal architectural traditions: the ancient Southern Kasbah style and the Islamic Hispano-Moorish. From the former, architects take spaciousness, simplicity and concord between building and environment. From the latter, they borrow colour, complexity and luxury.

Contemporary architecture in Morocco includes the second largest mosque in the world, in the city of Casablanca, on the Mediterranean Sea. For visitors to Morocco, this is one of the few Moroccan mosques that allows non-Muslims access. Designed by the French architect Michel Pinseau, the Hassan II Mosque was constructed between 1986 and 1993. It boasts the worlds’ tallest minaret (210 metres). Built on a promontory, half the building juts out over the water, which is visible through a glass floor. It too can be called ‘Neo-Moroccan, since it draws on both kasbah architecture and Hispano-Moorish style. In such buildings, an architectural thread that dates back more than a millennium lives on.