park saada

A design aiming to ensure the freedom of Moroccan women

Located in the outskirts of Marrakech, Morocco, park saada is a design aiming to promote women's involvement in society by creating new possibilities for education and training of women on traditional Moroccan arts for their own economic freedom. Learning from the culture and its dominant curator, Islam religion, park saada is designed by analyzing social dynamics of Moroccan society and focusing on the problematic aspects of the ways of living -a traditionally encouraged and imposed gender inequlity.

The project contains a main foundation building, the Noor of Art Foundation, which is setting forth a distinctive production space for women that is aiming to raise voices of the Moroccan women for this culturally-embedded problem. By bringing spaces for women to create, imagine, produce, socialize (pottery, Zellige and straw workshops, common kitchens and courtyards) and to do culturally-expected household chores (kindergarten, pantry and cooking corners in the workshops) together, the building forms a safe space for women where they get a chance to not to be disrupted by the imposed rules they face in their daily life during their creative and interactive process. Noor of Art Foundation building analyzes different types of architectures and elements of limitations for the female members of the society and presents a design formed as an accumulation of these architectural gestures -this time putting women, their needs and possibilities of different ways of occupying a space on focus. 

The second part of the design consists of series of pavilions designed to increase the efficiency of the already-ongoing and male-dominated production on site. By creating 6 types of pavilions for different stages of clay pottery, brick and Zellige production -like clay extraction, pottery/brick drying, firing and storing/selling- the second phase of the design focuses on making the processes and new actors of production visible which can slowly encourage a change in the societal balances.