DDAR: Rammed Earth and Wind Craft a Climate-Smart Home in Essaouira
DDAR stands on a 10-hectare hillside just outside Essaouira, Morocco, by Othmane Bengebara Studio. The project reads as a contemporary douar—rooted in local climate, craft, and community—yet tuned for present-day life. Designed in 2024 in collaboration with the owners and regional makers, this house embraces vernacular intelligence and bioclimatic thinking, from wind-calibrated openings to robust water management. It’s a home built by many hands, and for many conversations.
Light skims clay-rich walls as the hill lifts into view. A compact massing settles into the slope, catching wind and shadow while keeping heat at bay.
This is a house outside Essaouira, shaped by Othmane Bengebara Studio and a community of makers, where climate sets the brief and culture refines the response. It’s a contemporary reading of the douar, tuned to sun, wind, and arid ground. The throughline is environmental intelligence—vernacular principles reworked with present-day rigor and craft.
Channel the Wind
Openings are instruments, not afterthoughts. Accordion and pivoting windows built by a nearby carpenter let breezes in or seal them out as seasons shift, tempering daily life with measured airflow. High-level vents draw warm air upward and away, and near-floor apertures invite cooler currents across the room—an everyday choreography that reads the Atlantic winds without machines.
Stack Heat High
The principal living volume rises to six meters (19.7 feet). That height lets heat stratify, then exit through elevated openings while occupied zones stay comfortable and calm. Mass matters here, and so does proportion—the tall room breathes, trading excess warmth for steady comfort as the day swings from sharp sun to cooler dusk.
Sun, Shade, Power
Roof and courtyard edges broker light. Solar arrays shoulder the electrical load, while thick walls and tight reveals set deep shade that cuts glare and daily peaks. Water is treated as resource, not afterthought: a rigorous management system responds to arid conditions, aligning storage and use with the site’s limits and seasonal rhythm.
Ground the Living Room
At the core, a sunken conversation pit gathers people around a central hearth. Sitting low changes the view: sightlines meet the land rather than the horizon, folding the room into the hillside’s register. The house stays porous yet protective—a clay box that holds quiet while welcoming exchange, from meals to long, anchor-point talks.
Make by Hand
Material choices come from nearby ground and skilled hands. Rammed earth and gouged wood joinery carry touch and texture, their surfaces reading climate through density, shade, and slow thermal gain. Inside, commissioned pieces—from tableware to games in thuya wood—extend that material conversation, not as decoration, but as working parts of daily life.
As twilight slides across the walls, the rooms cool in step with the hill. Wind calms, the hearth glows, and the pit fills again with voices. The house holds to its climate first, then to its people—a quiet, durable pact between land, craft, and use.
Photography by Iman Zaoin
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