How I brought a river, and my city, back to life

The Fez River winds through the medina of Fez, Morocco—a mazelike medieval city that’s a World Heritage Site. Once considered the “soul” of this celebrated city, the river succumbed to sewage and pollution, and in the 1950s was covered over bit by bit until nothing remained. TED Fellow Aziza Chaouni recounts her 20 year effort to restore this river to its former glory, and to transform her city in the process.

I would like to share with you today

a project that has changed how I approach

and practice architecture:

the Fez River Rehabilitation Project.

My hometown of Fez, Morocco,

boasts one of the largest walled
medieval cities in the world,

called the medina, nestled in a river valley.

The entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since the 1950s, as the
population of the medina grew,

basic urban infrastructure

such as green open spaces and sewage

quickly changed and got highly stressed.

One of the biggest casualties of the situation

was the Fez River, which bisects
the medina in its middle

and has been considered for many centuries

as the city's very soul.

In fact, one can witness the presence

of the river's extensive water network

all throughout the city,

in places such as private and public fountains.

Unfortunately, because of the pollution of the river,

it has been covered little by little

by concrete slabs since 1952.

This process of erasure was coupled

with the destruction of many houses

along the river banks

to be able to make machineries

enter the narrow pedestrian network of the medina.

Those urban voids quickly became illegal parking

or trash yards.

Actually, the state of the river

before entering the medina is pretty healthy.

Then pollution takes its toll,

mainly due to untreated sewage

and chemical dumping from crafts such as tanning.

At some point, I couldn't bear

the desecration of the river,

such an important part of my city,

and I decided to take action,

especially after I heard that the city

received a grant to divert sewage water

and to treat it.

With clean water, suddenly

the uncovering of the river became possible,

and with luck and actually a lot of pushing,

my partner Takako Tajima and I

were commissioned by the city to
work with a team of engineers

to uncover the river.

However, we were sneaky,

and we proposed more:

to convert riverbanks into pedestrian pathways,

and then to connect these pathways

back to the city fabric,

and finally to convert the urban voids

along the riverbanks into public spaces

that are lacking in the Medina of Fez.

I will show you briefly now

two of these public spaces.

The first one is the Rcif Plaza,

which sits actually right on top of the river,

which you can see here in dotted lines.

This plaza used to be a chaotic transportation hub

that actually compromised the urban integrity

of the medina, that has the largest

pedestrian network in the world.

And right beyond the historic
bridge that you can see here,

right next to the plaza,

you can see that the river looked like

a river of trash.

Instead, what we proposed is to make

the plaza entirely pedestrian,

to cover it with recycled leather canopies,

and to connect it to the banks of the river.

The second site of intervention

is also an urban void along the river banks,

and it used to be an illegal parking,

and we proposed to transform it

into the first playground in the medina.

The playground is constructed using recycled tires

and also is coupled with a constructed wetland

that not only cleans the water of the river

but also retains it when floods occur.

As the project progressed and
received several design awards,

new stakeholders intervened

and changed the project goals and design.

The only way for us to be able to bring

the main goals of the project ahead

was for us to do something very unusual

that usually architects don't do.

It was for us to take our design ego

and our sense of authorship

and put it in the backseat

and to focus mainly on being activists

and on trying to coalesce

all of the agendas of stakeholders

and focus on the main goals of the project:

that is, to uncover the river, treat its water,

and provide public spaces for all.

We were actually very lucky,

and many of those goals happened

or are in the process of happening.

Like, you can see here in the Rcif Plaza.

This is how it looked like about six years ago.

This is how it looks like today.

It's still under construction,

but actually it is heavily used

by the local population.

And finally, this is how the Rcif Plaza will look like

when the project is completed.

This is the river, covered, used as a trash yard.

Then after many years of work,

the river with clean water, uncovered.

And finally, you can see here the river

when the project will be completed.

So for sure, the Fez River Rehabilitation

will keep on changing and adapting

to the sociopolitical landscape of the city,

but we strongly believe that by reimagining

the role and the agency of the architect,

we have set up the core idea
of the project into motion;

that is, to transform the river from sewage

to public space for all,

thereby making sure that the city of Fez

will remain a living city for its inhabitants

rather than a mummified heritage.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)