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ON THE EDGE OF THE SAHARA / workshop / Ksar M’hamid + Ksar Ouled Youssef
This area explores the meeting point of two ksour. It looks at the threshold between them: how they come together today, and what keeps them apart. What defines each one, and how their relationship might be redefined.timoncini Ludovica .giglia

ON THE EDGE OF THE SAHARA / workshop 2026 / area 3 / Kasbah Sidi Khalil Sbai [(Re)definition]
At the edge of the ksar, sits a kasbah and its mechouar that has become today an informal collective space for the ksar. The work here is about redefining its limits, rethinking about what borders mean today when we no longer need it to protect against invasion but against the desert.

Design area 2; Ksar Bounou [On the Edge]
This projects explores the edges of the ksar, both existing and possible: how the settlement meets the landscape around it, and how it relates to the desert and the oued.

ON THE EDGE OF THE SAHARA / Workshop 2026 / first days surveying and discussing

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This year destination is the oasis of M’Hamid El Ghizlane in Morocco
(Please, be nice and don’t scold us for the satellite image, we had a change of program)
Stay tuned to meet this year’s tutors and participants, and see where we will be and what we will do!

Auguste Mariette (born Feb. 11, 1821, Boulogne, Fr.—died Jan. 19, 1881, Cairo) was a French archaeologist who conducted major excavations throughout Egypt, revealing much about the earlier periods of Egyptian history.
Mariette joined the Egyptian department of the Louvre in 1849 and in the following year traveled to Egypt to obtain ancient manuscripts. Instead, he began excavating at Ṣaqqārah, an area that included part of the burial grounds of ancient Memphis.
He remained in Egypt four years, continuing excavations and dispatching most of what he found to the Louvre, where he became curator upon his return to France.

Accepting the position of conservator of monuments from the Egyptian government, Mariette in 1858 settled in Egypt, where he remained for the rest of his life. He eliminated unauthorized excavation, thereby securing a virtual monopoly on archaeological investigation, and he restricted the sale and export of antiquities in order to preserve new discoveries for the Egyptian nation. In 1859 Mariette succeeded in persuading the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt to establish a museum at Būlāq, near Cairo, to house what became the world’s foremost repository of Egyptian antiquities, the Egyptian Museum.
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«[…] Al-Azhar, un luogo venerabile dell’Islam, sa cui sono uscite, in quasi mille anni, le generazioni dei preti e dei dottori incaricati di diffondere la parola del Profeta fra i popoli, dal Maghreb sino al mare d’Arabia attraverso i grandi deserti. Verso la fine del nostro X secolo, i gloriosi califfi Fatimidi edificarono questa immensa accolta di archi e di colonne, che divenne la sede dell’università musulmana più rinomata del mondo e che, da allora, tutti i sovrani d’Egitto non hanno mai cessato di ampliare, aggiungendovi nuove sale, nuove gallerie, nuovi minareti, sino a fare di Al-Azhar quasi una città nella città.»
Pierre Loti, Il Nilo e la sfinge

« En plein jour, rien de banal comme ce Musée des Antiquités égyptiennes, composé pourtant de souvenirs sans prix. C’est la plus pompeuse et la plus outrageante de ces bâtisses dépourvue de style dont s’enrichit chaque année le Caire nouveau »
This is how, in 1909, Pierre Loti described the Egyptian Museum that was built in Tahrir square.
We can use the same words (if not worse) to describe the New Egyptian Museum.
Photos are taken from an article by Mohamed Elshahed () on The Architect’s Newspaperp

"Barrage et usine de Bin El Ouidane"
La Cité: r***e de la Cité universitaire de Paris
01/11/1963