Cultural Center Design Competition in Morocco
IUST students and staff won the Institutional Excellence Awards in an international design competition led by Dr. Haniyeh Sanaieian and Dr. Abdulhadi Daneshpour, assistant professors at the School of Architecture and Urban Design.
The competition brief was to design a cultural center on a brownfield site outside the capital of Morocco, focusing on activating the area’s tourism potential.
The IUST team aimed to seamlessly bridge internal and external spaces. Their design process emphasized creating fluid forms and shapes that blend into the landscape. To address the extreme outdoor climate, they incorporated a central courtyard housing shade-tolerant plant species, which improve air quality for the ventilated internal spaces.
The design features minimal shapes and a light ivy color to reflect solar radiation and minimize heat gain in the desert climate. The form is split by shadow gaps and lines that flow into the internal spaces, symbolizing the curvy hills of the surrounding area.
The structure is built from sustainably sourced wood from northern cities and finished with geopolymer concrete with light color additives. Interior furniture is crafted from upcycled materials sourced from tourism plastic waste. Multiple sustainability assessments were conducted using software like DesignBuilder and ENVI-met to minimize the carbon footprint.
Other team members: Hamid Kabuli, Ali Moradi, Mehsa Yazdani Bakhsh, Sia mak Zandi.
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