Benguerir University campus

The operation provides for the construction of shared facilities (mosque, sports center, learning center, restaurants), administrative offices and shops, bordered on both sides by student residences. The main city line of the Ben Guerir landscaped environment guide the design of the campus, combining continuities, a structured built framework, and abundant and rigorous plantations. The university campus project connects to the great landscape and to existing and future green axes, in order to intensify and enhance them. The common facilities are grouped around a large multifunctional square which constitutes a major living and gathering place. Depending on the time of the year, it constitutes a plant bed, a sports area, or a retention basin. The administration is deployed in a large volume crossed by a central aisle of the campus. The neighboring university canteen uses the same language, developing under a large pierced concrete veil. The mosque represents a unique object, whose treatment and in particular the color, makes it a special place, which embraces people with kindness. To the North, a landmark comes to mark the campus in the green city, by its thick and high volume (R + 7). Finally, student accommodation is developed in buildings with a cubic or rectangular plan, whose height varies from R + 1 to R + 4, arranged randomly in the orthogonal grid of the campus. They are set up like pavilions in the heart of a landscaped park. Based on the concept of “biophilic town planning”, which places man at the heart of urban biodiversity, the design enhances landscaped and vegetated spaces to strengthen daily contact with nature. This strategy governs health urban planning, that is to say a way of making a healthy city for all. The project promotes the use of techniques and colors in continuity with the local style of Moroccan vernacular architecture. The materials are natural, perennial and “bio-based” (stone, earth, brick, concrete, adobe and clay, wood). The campus is thus deployed as a green setting for all its inhabitants, whether they are students, workers or visitors, and has the qualities required to offer cutting-edge education.