The influence of culture on interior design - Morocco: from case studies and expert interviews

How to deal with the relationship between interior design and traditional culture, and its application in interior design are worthy of our thinking. A two-stage descriptive research method was adopted in alignment with the research aim and objectives. First, a comprehensive literature review was conducted which introduces architectural culture in Morocco briefly. In addition, certain buildings were chosen which make use of these elements. Furthermore, using the design gleaned from previous studies and additional insights provided by experts in the design industry, an interview was designed and administered to experienced Architects who have close relations and knowledge with Moroccan design industry aiming the view to eliciting responses to questions about the extent of adoption of culture. Lastly, conclusions were drawn on how the impact of culture may influence design and whether the outcome is a positive or a negative one.Como lidar com a relação entre design e cultura tradicional, e sua aplicação no design de interiores, foi o objeto da nossa reflexão. Visando enquadrar os objetivos da investigação, fez-se uma pesquisa descritiva, dividida em duas etapas. Primeiro, foi realizada uma breve síntese das caraterísticas do país e da cultura arquitetónica de Marrocos. Complementarmente, foram escolhidos alguns exemplos do uso de elementos dessa arquitetura. Além disso, analisaram-se projetos atuais, realizados em Marrocos, e obtiveram-se contributos adicionais, dados por especialistas, em entrevistas. Estas foram planeadas e realizadas a arquitetos experientes, que têm relações estreitas e conhecimento do design de espaços marroquinos, com o objetivo de obter respostas a perguntas sobre qual é o alcance da adoção da cultura nessa realização. Por fim, foram tiradas conclusões sobre como o impacto da cultura pode influenciar o design e se esse resultado é positivo ou negativo

Sawt, Bodies, Species. Sonic Pluralism in Morocco.

In Sawt, Bodies, Species, Gilles Aubry offers an account on sound and listening in Morocco across a wide domain of activities, including musical and artistic expression, sound archives, urban planning, building techniques, seismology, healing practices, industrial extractivism, and ecology. Sawt in Arabic literally means sound and voice. Sound in Morocco thus intimately relates to the body; it never quite corresponds with its modern Western counterpart as a phenomenon separable from the other senses. Sonic pluralism recapitulates Aubry's attempts to think sound and aurality together with modernity and (de-)coloniality. The transformative power of sonic pluralism is expressed in people's acts of listen- ing and sounding, aimed at questioning and shifting social conventions. On the level of ecology, sonic pluralism reveals extra-human agencies that mediate between people and their environment. Drawing on critical Sound Studies, ethnographic research, and artistic practice, Aubry's dense descriptions are complemented by audiovisual essays created in collaboration with local musicians, artists, and scientists

Contested space in the Kasbah of Marrakech: place, modernity and discourse, the Kasbah of Marrakech 1985 to 2004

The Kasbah, in origin a late twelfth-century citadel, occupies within the walled city of Marrakech a sovereign territory defined by its historical and present administrative boundaries. It is proposed that the Kasbah has in the last two decades fragmented into a contested space in which the shifting dynamics of differing interpretations of cultural ownership have displaced traditional confrontations with modernity. It is argued that the displacements, ambiguities and ambivalence surrounding contesting interpretations of cultural ownership of urban space might be identified as a 'local modernity' (to be differentiated from the modernity closely identified with global economic centres such as New York, London or Tokyo, which may be characterized as world cities). Contested space in the Kasbah—as in any current urban situation—is so complex that this thesis is structured through selective analyses of representations of space, time, culture, authority and authenticity in the competing but overlapping claims of the discourse of cultural heritage, the academic discourse, the Palace discourse and the discourse of tourism. In analysing contested space in the Kasbah, discourse is understood as corresponding to Michel Foucault's interest in what is assumed to be self-evident, 'natural' and therefore outside time. The formation of each discourse is discussed in order to identify its origins and to question what is taken to be timeless or universal. Analysis of the contested ownership—cultural rather than economic—of space focuses on interpretations of key terms and concepts ('space', 'time', 'culture', 'authority' and 'authenticity') that are indicative of competing discursive claims

LAND, RIGHTS, AND THE PRACTICE OF MAKING A LIVING IN PRE-SAHARAN MOROCCO

This dissertation explores the relationship between land tenure and livelihoods in pre-Saharan Morocco as an ethical struggle over subsistence rights and the definition of community. Research in an oasis valley of southern Morocco indicated how changing land use practices framed contestations over community, political authority, and social hierarchies. The dissertation specifically examines the extension of settlement and cultivation from the oasis into the arid steppe. The research methodology contextualizes household decision-making around land use and livelihood strategies within the framework of land tenure regimes and other regional, national, and global processes. Households with the resources and prestige to navigate customary tenure regimes in their favor used these institutions to facilitate land acquisition and investments in commercial agricultural production. Rather than push for capitalist land markets, they invoked a discourse of communalism in support of customary regimes. In contrast, marginalized families without access to land mobilized to divide collective lands and secure individual freehold tenure. This complicates a prominent critique in agrarian studies that privatization signals the immersion of peripheral lands into neoliberal tenure regimes. The research shows that in southern Morocco, resistance to communal tenure regimes favoring elites was rooted in a discourse of subsistence rights and ethical claims to membership in a just community rather than a simple acquiescence to the power of neoliberal property relations. The dissertation therefore explores the shifting fault lines of social differentiation and the political and cultural embeddedness of land in processes of repeasantization, the resurgence of rural peasantries in the context of the growing industrialization of global food production. The research draws on cultural anthropology, geography, and political economy to explore an understudied issue in the anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: the economic and environmental dimensions of agrarian livelihoods and rural social dynamics from a critical theoretical perspective

Enabling energy efficiency for low-income housing in Developing countries using MIT Design Advisor

Thesis (S.M. in Technology and Policy)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology and Policy Program, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (p. 102-107).There is a great need to improve energy efficiency of low-income housing, since people who can afford it least have to pay a significant portion of their income to make their homes more habitable or else live with greater health and environmental risks. One of the main barriers to improving energy efficiency in low-income housing is the lack of awareness regarding design choices and their associated externalities. Thus to enable better design decision-making, MIT Design Advisor, a rapid and simple building energy simulation tool, has been adapted to make the costs of poor housing energy efficiency more obvious and the benefits through simple design improvements more understandable and comparable. Through the use of this tool decision makers would be provided with a platform to investigate different design concepts and prioritize energy efficiency improvements for low income housing without having to spend time and money in hiring experts or conducting a pilot study. Also, a framework to engage different stakeholders past the design process towards implementing these recommendations has also been presented.by Zehra Ali.S.M.in Technology and Polic

Migration and Development in Southern Morocco. The Disparate Socio-Economic Impacts of Out-Migration on the Todgha Oasis Valley

Contains fulltext : mmubn000001_39939818x.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)RU Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 13 oktober 2003Promotores : Haan, L.J. de, Dietz, A.J.430 p

Migration, development and the state in Morocco and Mexico, 1963-2005

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 421-448).Mexico and Morocco have some of the longest standing and most advanced policies linking the emigration of their low-skilled workers to their national and sub-national economic development. In my dissertation, I examine the processes through which the governments of both countries designed the migration and development policies now being emulated by sending countries around the world as models of "best practice." Based on multi-sited longitudinal case studies of the main migration and development policies deployed by both countries, I follow current policy instruments back through their earlier - including failed -- iterations as well as through the multiple geographic and national spaces in both migration sending and receiving areas where those policies were implemented. I argue that Moroccan and Mexican processes of migration and development policy elaboration suggest a need to re-consider the purchase of current models of policy formulation. Most representations of policy design depict a process best described as analytic. Policy makers analyze a problem, identify solutions, and then evaluate their effectiveness. However, the Moroccan and Mexican experiences with crafting migration and development policy, with all of their messy indeterminacy, illustrate a process that was essentially interpretive in character.(cont.) Policy makers were acting in social and economic contexts that were constantly shifting, that were incessantly being remolded by massive migration patters - and that were, as a result, unintelligible to policy makers and extremely resistant to straightforward analysis. Policy makers engaged migrant and migration communities in interpretative processes through which they generated new meanings, constructed new identities, and forged new relationships, in an effort to make sense of the mutable field in which they endeavored to act. Those insights and connections served as the basis for the new institutions that would come to be regarded as major policy breakthroughs. The institutions provided structures through which the state, migrants, and their communities could re-envision local and national development in an on-going manner and could generate new conceptual and institutional innovations. Stated differently, they built institutional spaces for continuous state learning and innovation.by Natasha N. Iskander.Ph.D

Full Issue - JGI v. 14, n. 2

Full issue of Journal of Global Initiatives volume 14, number 2

New Perspectives in Interdisciplinary Cultural Heritage Studies: Contributions of the European Students’ Association for Cultural Heritage in the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018

Inspired by the announcement of a European Year of Cultural Heritage, the European Students’ Association for Cultural Heritage (ESACH) was established in 2017 by students at the University of Passau. Today, ESACH has become the first still-growing interdis-ciplinary and cross-generational network in the field. ESACH cur-rently brings together young researchers in the field of culture and heritage from all kinds of academic disciplines and is made up of members from various European universities and research centres, such as the UNESCO Chair on Cultural Property Law at the University of Opole (Poland) thanks to Dr. Alicja Jagielska-Burduk. ESACH’s main goal is to highlight the perspective of the younger generations with regard to cultural issues of European and national importance. Where various cultural institutions already show interest in collaborating with younger generations, we aim to establish a mutual exchange and active involvement as future decision makers. Within the network, the main questions are: How do we engage with the past elements of our culture(s)? How and why do we protect culture as a genuine element of a contemporary cultural system? What do younger generations state as heritage and what ways do they see to safeguard and experience it? ESACH stands up for a participatory way of involvement and is eager to take part in the cultural discourse at European and national levels. Until now ESACH members have been given the opportunity to contribute their ideas in several European events organized by the respective stakeholders. In June 2018, the ESACH Message as part of the “Student Summit” was presented during the high-level policy debate on the occasion of the Berlin European Cultural Heritage Summit. Present, amongst others, were Monika Grütters, Minister of State and Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Germany) and Tibor Navracsics, European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport (Hungary). In November 2018, ESACH has been actively involved in the annual meetings of the German Cultural Heritage Committee and the Swedish National Heritage Board in Strasbourg and Stockholm. This book brings together fifteen articles by twenty-two authors from Portugal, Germany, Spain, Greece, Brazil, USA, Romania and Turkey. This sharing of knowledge, culture and heritage studies through various disciplines shows the richness – and new perspectives – generated by the common passion for cultural heritage. The new perspectives and the sharing feeling are also present in both images on the cover. The "view of Lisbon" (Portugal) was drawn in the sixteenth century; it shows a disappeared Lisbon through the eyes and the colours of a German engraver. In the “Azulejo (tile) wainscot” we have the perfect example of foreign influences in the artistic creation of a Portuguese painter. These reinterpreted decorative patterns were affirmed over centuries as a feature of Portuguese identity. In the words of the “Berlin Call to Action”, we fervently hope that “The 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage marks a turning point for Europe’s ever-growing movement for cultural heritage. We must build on this momentum to recognize and unfold the positive and cohesive power of our shared cultural heritage and values to connect Europe’s citizens and communities and to give a deeper meaning to the entire European project. The time for action is now.”info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio