Foum-El-Oued Technopôle
Laâyoune, Maroc
2020
The project for the new town of Foum El Oued, on the Atlantic coast of Laâyoune - the largest city in Western Sahara - consists of a master plan covering 600 hectares and a development plan for phase I of the project covering 50 hectares of the Foum El Oued Technopole.
Une cité métabolique
- Slipping between marine and dune environments
- Boosting natural environments
- Settling in with the wind and sun
- Creating a new water cycle
- Favoring soft modes of transport
- Making the city energy self-sufficient
Extraits du master plan guide : Un urbanisme dessiné par l'environnement
- Settling in with the wind and sun
- Sunlight, blocks and fragmentation
- Renewable energies: resource potential at every project scale to guarantee self-sufficiency
- Risk and ecology, humbly taking root in geography
This project is also an opportunity to pursue the research initiated in Casablanca with Arep, by addressing the issue of resilience more directly, and by integrating risks and hazards even more closely into the design of the urban fabric: bioclimatic structure adapted to the hot, arid climate, echoing the shade code of the medina, self-cooling, but also protection against violent winds and sandstorms, integration of the risks of marine submersion, coastal erosion, silting and alteration of the dune belt.
The existing geographical boundaries constitute the physical limits of the project's urbanization, enabling the territorial ecosystem to be as preserved as possible, and the future urban ecosystem to be as stable and sustainable as possible. Built around a knowledge-based ecosystem, the Foum-el-Oued Technopôle New Town is being developed with resilience and resource conservation in mind.
Client
Fondation Phosboucraâ (Office chérifien des phosphates)
team
Arep (lead architect and urban planner), Atelier Franck Boutté
Mission
Urban and landscape study: master plan for 600 ha and development plan for phase 1 of the 50 ha Foum El Oued Technopole project
Schedule
Master plan (July 2018) - Development plan 50 ha - End of studies 2020