Architectural Design Portfolio
2025 Spring
M.Arch Graduation Project
Keywords Multilingualism, Linguistic Boundary, Temporality, Rammed Earth, Spatial Transformation
Location
Ravbat, Morocco
Program
Library
This study is a process-oriented architectural proposal that accepts weathering and erosion as design elements that generate spatial meaning, based on the temporality of architecture and the materiality of earth. It applies this approach to the design of a public library in Rabat, Morocco, a city shaped by a multilingual social structure. Architectural aging, which has long been regarded merely as something to be maintained and managed in order to preserve a completed form, is reinterpreted here as a temporal trace formed through relationships with the natural environment and users. In this context, the study focuses on rammed earth construction as a material technique that most directly reveals the passage of time.
The research method proceeds through three stages: theoretical review, specimen experimentation, and design application. First, the study theoretically examines the temporality of architecture and the meaning of weathering. It then produces rammed earth specimens with different stabilization ratios and observes their formal changes caused by erosion. The observations show that the lower the stabilization ratio, the more rapidly erosion and formal weakening occur, whereas higher stabilization ratios allow the form to be maintained over a longer period of time. The study also confirms a tendency for corners to erode first. These findings suggest that the erosion of earth walls is not an uncontrollable form of damage, but rather a design variable that can be regulated through stabilization ratio, thickness, slope, and placement strategy.
Based on these experimental findings, a public library was planned in the center of Rabat, Morocco. Morocco’s multilingual social structure, in which Arabic, Amazigh, French, and English overlap, as well as the invisible boundaries operating within it, are translated into the spatial organization of the library. Erodible, non-structural rammed earth walls are placed between reading rooms assigned to different languages. Initially, these earth walls function as physical boundaries separating each language space. Over time, however, they gradually wear away and recede, generating new spaces. Through this process, new relationships of sight and circulation are formed between spaces that were once disconnected, and the library gradually expands from a collection of compartmentalized rooms into an open public space.
The significance of this study lies in its proposal of a public library design that embraces the weathering and erosion of materials as design elements expressing temporality, while visualizing Morocco’s multilingual tensions as a gradual process of softening spatial boundaries. In conclusion, this study seeks to demonstrate that architecture can continue to transform after completion through organic relationships with materials, the natural environment, and users, thereby expanding its social meaning over time