Aziza Chaouni

Recorded on March 19, 2025. Read a transcript at the bottom of the page.

Aziza Chaouni launched Aziza Chaouni Projects (ACP) in 2011 with offices in Toronto and Fez, Morocco. The design office focuses on sustainable design and adaptive reuse in the Global South, including rehabilitating heritage buildings such as the oldest library in the Middle East and the oldest university in West Africa, as well as two Getty Foundation supported projects: the Sidi Harazem thermal bath complex near Fez and the International Fair in Dakar Senegal. She has also developed a prototype for an anti-seismic earth brick house in Morocco. This work has been steadily garnering accolades, including the Prix du Design Institut de Monde Arabe and the World Monuments Fund Watch Award, and it has also been published and presented internationally. It was included in the 18th Venice Biennale of Architecture, curated by Lesley Lokko in 2023. Prior to ACP, Chaouni co-founded and ran Bureau E.A.S.T. (Ecological Architecture and Systems of Tomorrow) with partner Takako Tajima, and their work received the The Architectural League Prize as well as the global Holcim Foundation Gold Award in 2009. Chaouni graduated with distinction from Harvard Graduate School of Design and is currently an associate professor of architecture at the University of Toronto.

About I Would Prefer Not To

Conceived and produced by MIT’s Critical Broadcasting Lab and presented with The Architectural League, I Would Prefer Not To¹Herman Melville, “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street,” The Piazza Tales (1856). tackles a usually unexamined subject: the refusal of an architectural commission. Why do architects make the decision to forfeit the possibility of work? At what point is a commission not worth it? When in one’s career is it necessary to make such a decision? Whether concealed out of politeness or deliberately shielded from public scrutiny, architects’ refusals usually go unrecorded by history, making them difficult to analyze or learn from. In this series of recorded interviews, I Would Prefer Not To aims to shed light on the complex matrix of agents, stakeholders, and circumstances implicated in every piece of architecture. The podcast won the 2025 AIA Architecture in Media Award, a prize recognizing contributions that elevate and challenge the architectural discourse.

Transcript

This transcript was created using speech-to-text AI software and was lightly edited for continuity. The text may not accurately capture all information or aspects of the conversation.

Ana Miljački  00:20
Hello and thank you for tuning in. I’m Ana Miljački, Professor of Architecture at MIT and director of the Critical Broadcasting Lab. And on behalf of the Architectural League of New York and the Critical Broadcasting Lab, I welcome you to our architecture podcast series titled I Would Prefer Not To. I Would Prefer Not To is an oral history project conducted through audio interviews on the topic of perhaps the most important kind of refusal in architects’ toolboxes, refusal of the architectural commission. By definition, the topic of refusal stays hidden from public scrutiny and thus also hidden from history. Withdrawals of this kind tend not to leave paper trails and are not easy to examine or learn from, and yet the lessons contained in architects’ deliberations about and decisions not to engage are politically relevant and urgent. Decisions to not engage a commission, or types of commissions, or commissions with certain characteristics inevitably forfeit potential profit, placing other values above it, at least momentarily. Today I’m talking to Aziza Chaouni. Thank you for joining me, Aziza.

Aziza Chaouni  01:29
Thank you so much Ana for having me.

Miljački  01:33
Aziza Chaouni launched the first version of her practice Bureau EAST with Takako Tajima in 2008 right after finishing her Master’s at the GSD. The work of Bureau East was recognized with the Young Architects award from the Architectural League of New York in 2009. It’s Fez River remediation and urban development scheme also won the global Holcim Foundation Gold Award in 2009 as well as the Holcim Foundation Gold Award for Middle East and Africa, and it received a few other important recognitions. Bureau East operated across LA, Fez and Toronto. In 2011 Chaouni launched Aziza Chaouni projects, ACP, which also operates across continents, with offices in Fez, Morocco and in Toronto, Canada, where she is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Toronto. The work of ACP has been focusing on sustainable design and adaptive reuse in the Global South, which has manifested in rehabilitating heritage buildings such as the oldest library in the Middle East or the oldest university in West Africa, the two Getty Foundation supported projects Sidi Harazem thermal bath complex near Fez and the International Fair in Dakar Senegal. She has also developed a prototype for an anti-seismic earth brick house for Morocco. This work has been steadily garnering accolades, including the Prix du Design Institut de Monde Arabe, the World Monuments Fund Watch Prize, and it has also been published and presented internationally. It was included in the 18th Venice Biennale of architecture, curated by Leslie Lokko in 2023. Aziza, I know that you’re in Morocco now working, but as usual, in this program, we will start by talking about the work that is not on your boards. So let’s talk first about your most memorable decision to not engage or to drop a commission. And if that has not happened yet, can you imagine it happening? And on what grounds?

Chaouni  03:36
Sure, I think I have refused several commissions in the past, mainly from private clients who came to me in Morocco in particular, asking me to design a project for which we’re not sharing the same values. And actually, I have a list of architects that specialize in my own country, in different type of buildings, into high luxury villas, mcmansions of a sort, 1001 Nights mcmansions. Sometimes it’s office buildings. Sometimes it’s commercial buildings. And I’m not there denying it, or denied it, or walking away from these commissions because of the building typology, but rather because the values of the client and mine are not coinciding. And so now, with experience, I’ve learned very quickly to read the chemistry between myself and the client and to immediately pull that list and to say I have colleagues who I think would share your values and would be a much better match like in any relationship, I think that it’s knowing the chemistry is very important. When I was much younger, I was excited about any project. I would’ve been jumping on anything, and very often having to walk away a bit late in in the game, but I think very early on, I set that, I would say, standard for myself, for my two offices, thinking that it was not worthwhile my time and effort to embark in a project for which I do not share the same values. And what I can tell you is that I have to acknowledge that I can do that because I’m in a position of privileged, because I’m a professor, because I take on projects in my office that I believe in, and because of this in-between position that I have, between academia and practice.

Miljački 05:53
Thank you. In an early lecture about your work, probably still talking about the Fez River project, you offered that in order to make things happen in the context in which you were working, you, or one, had to put aside their design ego and authorship for the sake of activism, which allowed you to reimagine the role of the architect in this but also any context. It seems to me that this first project set up a very particular mode of engaging that plays out in a number of your recent projects. So I’m wondering if you can help us understand how you find yourself in the situation to be thinking about and working on the revitalization of the oldest university in West Africa, or of the amazing 1960s modernist projects in Morocco and Senegal. How do you sort of, how do you get there?

Chaouni  06:44
Well, Ana, if I may say, if you may allow me, maybe I’ve never said this to you, but you actually played a role in this, because you were my TA and you were, back 25 years ago, if I may say, 24 years ago… Wow, it makes us feel so old! But you did play a very, very big role in the architect that I became, because you were actually the first person when I was at the GSD, because I studied, you know, engineering at Columbia, and I came to Harvard not knowing much about architecture as a civil engineer, and so my encounter with the field of architecture and theory was very abrupt, if I may say. And you made it extremely smooth for me in the TA sessions, where I can tell you one sentence that I remember, you were trying to shake us as a section to speak, and I was extremely shy. English was not my first language. I didn’t study architecture. And you told us, hey, guys and girls, why are you here? If it’s not to critically think. And architecture is not just about form, but you need to be thinking about the purpose behind what you’re doing. So critical thinking in the field was introduced to me basically by you. And I do remember, even I can tell you in which classroom we were in, that building outside of the GSD, and exactly that moment where it just clicked. Where that sentence made it click, and I said, Wow, okay, we have a responsibility to critically think and critically assess every one of our projects and every decision. So thank you, Ana. And I had to tell you…

Miljački 08:36
Well thank you! This is the sweetest of curveballs in this conversation.

Chaouni  08:39
…had to tell you, and honestly, it is from the heart. And so in a sense, the project, the Fez River Project, the second person that really marked me was Hashim. He was my thesis advisor, and who told me, Aziza, listen, he gave me like a guilt trip. You have to put, let’s put ourselves back in context. I was at the GSD in the early 2000s where, you know, Zaha Hadid, and the work of Scott Cohen and so forth, were all the rage and so forth, where formalism was like the, what all the students were after. And Hashim took me behind, in between two doors, and told me, if you want me to be your thesis advisor, you’d better live up to the expectation that you are the first Moroccan to graduate from the GSD, and so you owe it to your country to do something, to do a project or a thesis.

Miljački 09:39
No pressure!

Chaouni  09:39
Yes, exactly no pressure. That has, that would have some type of impact, that would contribute to the discourse, something that has a meaning to you. Otherwise find another advisor. Goodbye. And I remember he closed the door of his office and it was, oh, no, what am I going to do? And during the Christmas break, I said, Okay, I just need to go for it. And this is where the Fez River project emerged. It was my thesis, at first, with the encouragement of Hashem. And then I guess after that, there was no turning back then. I saw… honestly, the realization is, I felt that Hashem, it was like, that sentence, it slapped me on the face. I was in an extremely privileged position. I have to give back in one way. I didn’t want my thesis to be a nice project on a portfolio or piece of paper that’s going to be just on a drawing. And Hashim, But I kept on asking Hashim. I didn’t believe him in some way. I had told him that, Hashim what am I going to do after it’s done? I said. You’re going to go to the mayor of your city and you’re going to show him the work. I said, But who’s going to believe a woman, who just finished school? He said, Just do it. And he was right. But then, I mean, Hashim knew that I was very strong headed, so the mayor actually didn’t care. So I went and I talked to so many different people. And finally, it was the Department of Waterworks, because I was also a civil engineer, it happens, they said, All right, this young person, great idea, we have sewage that’s running through this old city. Yes, it stinks. Let’s do something about it. Her thesis is a good idea. Sure. Come in. And this is how the whole project started, and it feels that then it became a type of free wheel, like on a hill, and I was like okay, now I’m in it. I need to make it happen. I cannot stop here. But also that project. I mean, it’s not the topic of this whole podcast, but I could speak about it for hours, because it was the biggest lesson. I’ve learned 100-fold what we learn at school. And then when I met with other colleagues across the world in the global south that worked on a municipal project that are extremely complex, where the design component is only 1% and 99% is community engagement, it’s politics. It also a lot of technical work that have nothing to do with architecture, but where we, one has to understand and to be able to speak on equal ground with the technicians.

Miljački 12:16
Let me ask you, so from the Fez River, it’s clear to me that it set up a mode of work. 

Chaouni  12:23
Yes.

Miljački 12:24
But so what I’m wondering is, do you, following that, with these current projects and recent projects, do you seek out these specific situations, or do people seek you out for them? Would you call them opportunities, or would you call them commissions? Do you have clients? 

Chaouni  12:41
What had happened, yes, I mean, throughout the years, I became well known as the person who would never give up, who’s tough, who has principles about sustainability and about community engagement. And so this, what was very interesting, is that the Fez River brought me even projects in areas of the world that I would never thought that I would work. I mean, in the north of Jordan, in Yarmouk, which is in the north, where there are refugee camps that are Palestinian, that are Syrians, and working on a national park that has become extremely damaged. And so the idea is that, how do you integrate Jordanians and all these minority groups that are not getting along in the protection of this park? And in a sense, I was just thrown in the lion’s den, because no one in Jordan wanted to touch this, and I was like, Okay. What is the worst that could happen? I would just try, and it worked. Then, again, I received the phone call one day from, I was not in my office, the mayor of Noumea in New Caledonia called, said she’s seeking me for a project. And I thought it was a joke. I didn’t even call back the number. I thought it’s impossible. And in Noumea, which is in New Caledonia, the capital of New Caledonia, was a penitentiary. It’s three hours east of New Zealand, so in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by sharks. It was a penitentiary island where a lot of French opponents and criminals, but also rebels from the old colonies of France were all brought in and then they were used to colonize the island. So the island had locals. You had North Africans, and Africans. You had French criminals, and you had the militaries. All these populations, they for more than two centuries, continue to hate each other and not get along, that even a French military person, third generation would not marry, who was a prison guard would not marry a descendant of a French con or criminal or etc. So when she called me, why did she call me? Because of the connection with Renzo Piano, somebody at Renzo Piano told her, Oh, you know, you’re looking for somebody who’s not French, because for a decade, no one could resolve this entrance of their city, because no one would get them to agree. Somebody who’s not French, somebody who’s North American mentality, because it’s Australian, So, you know, let’s say, and somebody who’s more neutral than the US, so Canada is more neutral, and who’s maybe not from an Old Colony, so that she can sympathize or with the descendants.

Miljački 15:26
The perfect Venn diagram.

Chaouni  15:27
Well, but again, I knew nothing. It was very complex. I mean, honestly, I said, what is the worst that can happen is I get a free holiday. I get to see the Renzo Piano’s, fantastic Tjibaou Center that is better than any image you would see of it. I go to the beach and I fail. So the thing about the Fez project, it taught me, because many parts of the Fez project failed, were not what I had planned them to be. So I grew up not to be afraid of failure.  Like to set up certain goals and to be ready to say, Okay, if we get some wins, then that’s already better than nothing. And for Noumea and in Yarmouk, very oddly, that gave me a lot of confidence, because I succeeded. And through a collaborative method and through also a lot of discussions and time, I think time is really the key. I think in North America, projects and in the West, projects are so fast. Taking the time. I’m a proponent of slow architecture, and sometimes you cannot buy time. But if people have no choice, they tell you, Okay, you’re our last draw. What can you do? I said, give me time, and I would deliver. Then they have… They would just listen to you.

Miljački 16:40
I feel like you’ve already begun telling us some of the things that one needs to have, the kinds of expertise that one needs to have to produce this kind of unique body of work. But maybe let’s talk about that. What kinds of expertise does this work require, or body of work has required? Do you start with research? What type of research?

Chaouni  17:02
I would say, start with empathy. I would say honestly, that’s the first quality that I would tell you is necessary when you’re dealing with places of conflict or places that are extremely complex, or places with very large social economic disparities. I think being honestly interested into bettering the built environment for the largest number, if I have to take the Michel Eccochard famous phrase. 

Miljački 17:32
Go for it.

Chaouni  17:33
I think people feel it. Feel it that you are genuine. And I think this can only work if you work on your own terms. And it took time. It took work. I mean, maybe the one project that you see, there are 10 that I failed to convince the client to work in the way that I wanted to work, etc. And I think the type of research, field research is extremely important in the Global South, in many projects where I work, even in the Sierra Leone project in Old Fourah Bay, the Harvard of West Africa, there were no plans whatsoever. There was no history. There were no archives, or they were very scattered in so many different countries and even different continents. So again, the matter of time is very important. So to be rigorous, to never give up, to dig, but to use, also, for each project, you find different tools. So we use, sometimes the radio, a radio show to say who has photos or who has postcards from this building. In some countries, it’s to create this Whatsapp group. Sometimes it’s a website, sometimes it’s an Instagram account, so to rely on diversity of different sources, and not just the sources that we know, because those might have very little literature and a lot of field research, also, obviously.

Miljački 18:52
I’ll ask you definitely more about that as we as we go. But I was interested in the terms you have used over time to describe some of the work you do. And there is a progression over the years, or maybe across a few lectures, from leniency to resilience, remediation and recovery to sustainability and adaptive reuse. And I wondered, sort of mulling those words over, I was wondering how contextual is this vocabulary? Are there terms that you prefer to use in different contexts?

Chaouni  19:28
Ana, that’s a difficult question, but definitely, I think that the evolution you noticed is very sharp. Your remark regarding the transition in my work from an architecture that has sustainability goals that are very much environmental and that deals with fauna and flora are correct, because I transitioned from that type of approach to an approach that is more concerned with circular economy and, like, adaptive reuse, and that is a result of many factors. One is obviously a result of the environment, the academic North American environment where I teach and where I evolve, but also because of the growing climate crisis that we are encountering more acutely in countries like Morocco and droughts, extreme weather events, but also the political instability around the world. With the crisis in Ukraine, for example, affected immensely prices of aluminum and other type of materials in West Africa. And that, in a way, forced me to start to rethink which materials we should be using, and if we should be even building at all, and I think that this manifesto for not constructing is something that we’ve been hearing a lot of in the field. My colleague, that you must know, Charlotte [Malterre Barthes] from EPFL, is a big proponent of the decroissance. So to not build, but this is not something that in a country, like in a continent like Africa, in Morocco, that we can afford, because cities are booming, are exploding, and if we’re not constructing, people are going to be living in shantytown. So how? So how do we deal with this conundrum? And some of the answer is to try to use as much of local materials as possible without being romantic or nostalgic, because we cannot build in rammed earth everywhere, it’s too costly. So I started thinking about the development of mass produce materials that are less impactful on the environment, such as compacted earth bricks, or even rammed earth panels that are pre made. So those are some of the new considerations that I’ve been having. But also, I think the adaptive reuse of buildings from the 60s that are independence buildings that very often are completely discarded for many reasons. Because, one, they’re seen as being obsolete. Two, they’re seen as being from the west. So now there is a pastiche movement, unfortunately, in a lot of African countries, either a pastiche movement or a movement to copy the West. So to have these glass towers that make absolutely no sense in our kind of climates where, when you have a power outage, you have no air conditioning, and you’re technically in the sauna, you cannot even open the windows. I mean, yeah, I think that it’s a very big challenge.

Miljački 23:01
Let me talk about those 60s buildings, maybe, for a second, or really, I would like us to talk about conservation as both political and an aesthetic project. And I’m fascinated by the tactical moves that change the value of the buildings you’re working with, or that change the way these buildings are seen by their most important everyday users. And here I’m thinking of the joyous images of maybe furry swings in the former abattoir, the lovely interviews, really, that were included in your video piece in Modern West Africa, in Venice. I feel like there is a way, or there’s something about attempting to transform how these projects are understood, or architectures are understood before you even begin any kind of operation on them.

Chaouni  24:04
Yes, that is very correct, and that I understood it when I was working on Sidi Harazem, which is an incredible 12 hectare concrete oasis, and it’s a thermal bath with many spaces, et cetera. And obviously, to my architecture eyes, I was enamored by this place. This is where I spent a lot of my childhood, etc. And I realized myself that it’s only when I came to the GSD that I actually realized that there was an architect behind this project, and the name of the architect. And by the time I realized who the architect was, the architect has passed away, and that made me realize the importance of knowing our own history. I mean, this is, this was Morocco’s first leisure complex made by the Moroccan young independent state for Moroccans on a site that is a Sufi saint’s mausoleum site, on a spring that was even used by Romans. So that had a very, very long history. And yet us Moroccans didn’t know this history. I mean, were not taught this, even in the architectural schools in Morocco, let alone at places like the GSD or where architecture histories, extremely, has not been decolonized yet, and this complex was incredible. If me as an architect didn’t know this history, or other architects in Morocco don’t even value it, how do you expect somebody who lives there or works there, who just, you know, like a merchant? I have nothing against merchants, but let’s say somebody who’s not trained as an architect, would understand the significance of this complex. So very quickly I understood that with this project, that was supported by Getty, that the approach that you would have in the West to just do conservation management, plan, do all the technical work and even do archival work, would not be sufficient and would not lead to any systemic change, because I understood that the best ambassador of this building are the people that are using it. So I’m going to share with you a little anecdote that when I started working on Sidi Harazem, which was really the first modern building that I embarked on, full on. I started to have this nightmare at night that a truck would hit me, because I’m always not looking where I’m crossing, and daydreaming and thinking about the plan of Sidi Harazem, that I would die, and then I would say, well, but what would happen to the complex? Or who would defend it, and who would even finish my research? I know it sounds really silly, very crazy, but I would have these anguish attacks, panic attacks, and so very quickly, this is what drove me to say, well, the locals that use it every day, they need to understand that it’s so important that this is theirs, and this is part of their heritage, this is part of their history, and that this brutalist complex is Moroccan. It expressed a moment of Morocco’s history and its moment of it wanting to be progressive, modern, etc, showing its full glorious independence. But it had so many, like many places, as you know, in Yugoslavia that had this situated form of modernism, that had all these integrated artists and craftsmen and local material. So it’s marvelous. I mean, those buildings even have lessons for us because they were for today. They had no choice but to be passively cooled. They had all these very interesting passive techniques, use of materials, etc. So anyways, to just to come back to the core of the topic that I felt that the first step before even doing anything or any studies or in archival work or technical work, was to engage with the users and to share with them the importance, to understand if they see any significance. Sometimes it was significance that I was not seeing. It was their own, and they would share it with me, but also to share with them who Zevaco was, which type of man he was, and slowly trying to find people that worked on the construction site or were caretakers of the place, etc, that would also share the oral history, since we were lacking archives, to put it on a website, to do a campaign on social media, on Facebook, using the media to talk about it. Because at the very start, I, very honest, this project with Getty was self-initiated, but I needed to get the support of the owner of the complex, which was the state pension fund. And I annoyed them so much at the end, they told me, a year later, they told me, they said, just to get rid of you because you are such a pest, you know, just because I would tell them, if you don’t do that, it’d be so sad, and if something happens to the company, it’d be your fault. I would name you, you know, I mean, it was at the beginning, it was very kind, but when they said the we want to sell the complex to a Chinese company to turn it, to demolish it, and turn into a golf course, I had to answer in some way. So to get rid of me, they said yes. And so we actually worked on the project together. And Getty had The Keeping It Modern program, it was incredible, because they would always invite us to these workshops in London. We would visit to the Barbican together, us and the client, and suddenly, when dollar signs started to appear in their eyes, that this actually could be profitable, suddenly, the whole understanding of the value of this heritage for certain people, that it would have an economic value. For others, it’s a spiritual value, some it’s about the pride of the Independence and the architecture is one of the many significances that this heritage holds. 

Miljački 30:05
I wanted you already to talk about, or I was hoping you would talk about the Getty Foundation grant for Keeping It Modern, as a catalyst for a couple of these projects, but also as a way of, in a way, thinking about practice, or how you support the practice, or imagine the practice working logistically. So you’ve begun, but you can tell us more about it, because it seems to me like we have maybe clients… There are certainly NGOs that are involved in some of the work, and then the grant that seems very important

Chaouni  30:42
Well, for the project with the Getty Foundation, Keeping It Modern grant, which unfortunately, is finished. It was a 10 year old grant, which is really a pity. It was really an alliance with the government who owns this building. So it was a lot of meeting with ambassadors, U.S., Canadian ambassadors, trying to have them help to influence the local government, to try to find ways to advocate for the building. So honestly, a lot of self-initiatives to try to, in a way, create an interest from local governments. I would say that it’s an alliance. Those are more institutional alliances. For this adaptive reuse project of Old Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, it was also completely different story. I went to visit a friend of mine, actually he was at M.I.T., who became the Minister of Education of Sierra Leone. He was originally from Sierra Leone, David Moinina, and to advise him on schools that he had to build, 200 schools, and which was called, the project on my website, you can see it, Draw Me a School, or Draw Your Own School. He showed me this building. He told me, Aziza, this is the biggest eyesore, this is our landmark. What can we do? And once again, creating alliances here with the World Monuments Fund, applying for grants that are State Department grants. So honestly, doing the project from the ground up, but those take very long, because the World Monument Fund project, I started in 2019 for example, and now 2025 we’re starting construction. So you have to really be very engaged, and it might not work. It might work. You might not get the grant. And we got the first grant, then we got a second grant. So you just have to like running marathons.

Miljački 33:02
I feel like we’ve already begun, or maybe even discussed enough, the mechanics of your collaborations with clients, NGOs, maybe contractors and fabricators are not in the story yet. But what I wanted to also ask you is how you think about various architects like Zevaco, whose work you know you have to engage or inherit in a way in this process.

Chaouni  33:28
Well, I can tell you that it’s actually very difficult, because when you admire an architect, I mean, for me, Zevaco is just the ultimate master for me. He is one of the most important architects of the 20th century, I think the most exciting one. It’s, in a way, a mentor to me for working here in Morocco. So I actually was beating myself like over and I think having those panic attacks with any decision that I had to make, was, would Zevaco roll in his grave if he saw what I had to do? And especially in a situation where we had to change the buildings, and when we had to make certain adjustment, etc, and I would agonize over it. And then I organized a Getty event, International Symposium on preservation in the Global South, in Sidi Harazem itself. And I invited some incredible architects, among them Ammar Khammsh, who’s Jordanian again, incredible, incredible person, poet, archeologist, architect, and I shared with him my anguish, and he told me, he took me and told me, Aziza this is your project now. Do not think twice. Go for it. You can do it, and I just needed that cheerleading. And he told me, Zevaco would be very happy, don’t worry. And that freed me, in a certain way, to think, buildings are always evolving. Buildings have always evolved. The key myth is like cooking. You know, you need to know, you make the call on how to keep the soul alive, the spirit alive of that building and what Zevaco was intending. But how do you keep the building alive and also useful for the users, today and users of the future. And relevant?

Miljački 35:33
I don’t want to eclipse the freestanding construction projects that you have done as well, so maybe we can talk about the transfer of knowledge across this, these two ways of operating. I’m assuming it exists. So what techniques and what maybe materials, or what concerns are consistent across the new work and conservation work, and maybe what is specific to the new work?

Chaouni  35:59
Sure, I think that what’s consistent with the old work, especially buildings from the 60s, like the International Fair of Dakar or the Sidi Harazem Thermal Complex, are in with passive techniques. How could we with very minimal use of mechanical systems, and also energy, fossil fuels energy, create a comfortable interior space? So this, I think, is a lesson and something that I strive to keep. So I remove the air conditioner as much as I can, etc. In those 60s buildings and in my new constructions, I always try to go for passive systems, as much as I can, or go for systems like Canadian wells that are also very efficient. I would say that that’s one of the things that’s very similar. Then I think the integration of craft, of local craft as much as possible has been a huge inspiration for me. And now what I’ve been doing in not just in Morocco, but in other countries, Ghana, Sierra, Leone, Burkina, where I work as well, is to try to have the maximum, also, social impact. So what I’ve been doing, I’m a feminist, so I’ve been trying to support women cooperatives. So instead of buying an Ikea lamp, for example, I will develop, for example, like a new lamp in collaboration with this cooperative. It usually would do the same model than what others are doing. So to diversify their offering, we will do a line with them. We will offer it to them. I’m not a good businesswoman, because otherwise I’ll be selling it and, you know, whatever, but I, in a way, we do it for the project, and then the design becomes theirs, and they also become… what we noticed over time is that it is like planting a little seed, that they can bend the tradition, or they can, in a way, let their own creativity lead them to new models and to reinvent, in a way, their own craft. So this was also something that, in a way, got me, that I was inspired from the work of somebody like Zevaco, for example.

Miljački 38:22
How big is your office, and how do you logistically operate offices in these different places? What kinds of superpowers are needed to pull this off?

Chaouni  38:33
To sleep very little, to not need a lot of sleep. No, that helps, to be able to sleep anywhere. When you’re traveling in the plane, I can very easily just put my head down, so sometimes I miss planes because I would just, I’m just going to take a quick nap, and I just would miss a plane. So no, I’m just joking. I think it’s a very difficult task. I don’t have a secret recipe. Sometimes I fail terribly. But what had helped me a lot was that during COVID, I closed my Toronto office officially, and I have people that are working remotely. So by focusing on one office, which is the one in Morocco, where I have six people now, including kind of administrative staff, it has become much more easier to manage. And then locally, in every country we work, in South Morocco, we have local partners that are usually friends or people that I go to and that I meet.

Miljački 39:26
But I am also interested in the way in which the financial structure of it works, the idea that you can combine these various types of projects, self-initiated, NGO sponsored, and some commissions and sort of support an office of six people. So if you have things about that that you’d like to tell us, that would be great, but I’m also interested in whether or not you have procedures in place by which you expose the team or the office to the realities of running the office. And do you invite them to think of, about the commissions or projects that you will and will not take.

Chaouni  40:04
The first one is, how do you manage economically such an office? I have to tell you that I’m very terrible with money, and so I’m not making any money whatsoever from my office. I’m trying not to lose money. If I break even, I am very happy. I’m supported by my salary at the university. I’m extremely transparent about it to my office, to everyone that so therefore, as soon as we make a little bit of money, I’m gonna just use it to volunteer for a not for profit, for example, or to invest it in research or so forth. Technically, I run as a not for profit in a certain way, but you cannot be a not for profit and run an architecture office, for example, in a country like Morocco, it’s illegal. But you know, in general, to find a healthy balance is to have some large projects, mainly in restoration here in Morocco, because this is an expertise that I developed. Also do some consulting for entities like UNESCO or the UN Habitat and so forth that would then come to support smaller scale projects. So I have to be aware of this, to always have a large restoration project that would require very expert skills that we have, that then would be well paid, that would then help support the smaller projects, that would require longer time and longer research. But again, I think since I’ve been doing this now for 20 years, I can then ask for fees that would compensate me properly, and that would allow me then to continue to do the type of work I do. And for those projects that require grants, when you know we are applying for grants and so forth, those projects, I get a fee as the architect, obviously. But of course, the time that you spend investing and applying for grants and waiting and so forth, this is where you need those other larger projects to support you and to remain economically viable. And then, if people are aware, how? Yes. So this is something that is extremely important to me, that the finances of the office are 100% transparent to everyone in my team. The contracts are always visible to everyone, how much we’re making, like for every project, all of the invoices, were using the same Dropbox folder that they all shared there. It’s all transparent. That has been my approach.

Miljački 42:50
Maybe now comes the question, did you ever regret taking or not taking a commission?

Chaouni  42:57
I did regret taking commissions, and I can tell you which ones. They’re the one that I did for my family, I think, for family members, and then for very, one very close friend that we’re still trying to finish her home. Those are very difficult, because then a few family members don’t see you as a professional, but especially homes where you have a couple, and then you become the person in the middle, and it’s a recipe for full disaster that I do not recommend, and I would not do again, and then you cannot leave them. You cannot quit, because they’re your family. They’re going to blame you forever.

Miljački 43:37
So how would you describe the conditions in which ACP does its best work?

Chaouni  43:44
I think that they’re usually when we’re working with the visionary client that shares our principles for social equity, for sustainability, for environmental protection, this is when it clicks. I mean, it’s like a good relationship, to have this good chemistry is, I think, necessary. And I think it was Renzo Piano that once told me that a good project is the one that has a good client.

Miljački 44:17
And are there ideal candidates for the type of recovery that is most meaningful to you? And here I’m talking about building types or not types, but sort of circumstances, maybe.

Chaouni  44:29
You mean, if there are certain buildings that I would like to salvage?

Miljački 44:32
I was like imagining… Yes, yes, actually!

Chaouni  44:36
Oh my god, don’t get me started! I have, like, such a long list. If I could, sometimes I wish that I could clone myself, then they would be able to then work on all of this projects to self-initiate them, find funding and go to restore them.

Miljački 44:56
So Aziza, thank you very much for talking to me today. And listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of I Would Prefer Not To, produced by myself and Julian Geltman.