PAVILION | Tremenheere Art Park, Penzance | Unit 21 | 2013

SEEING THE UNSEEN | Tangier, Morocco | Unit 21 | 2013

Pavilion

Seeing the Unseen // Tangier’s Horizontal Medina

“We are not tourists. We are travelers”
– “Oh. What is the difference?” –
“A tourist is someone who thinks about going home the moment they arrive …
Whereas a traveler might not come back at all”
(Paul Bowles – The Sheltering Sky)

The proposal for a public meeting point of travelers and inhabitants of Tangier is inspired by the unique atmosphere of the Boutique Majid, in the small and busy Rue Les Almouhads in Tangier‘s old quarter. The owner of this shop. Abedelmajid Rais El Fenni, invited us to his private roof terrace overlooking the whole Medina, offering a completely new experience of the city. The public outside space designed on the neighboring roof spaces introduces the visitor into the traditional Moroccan tea ceremony and houses gallery and studio spaces accommodating artist like in the heyday of Tangier. During the night the roofscape is transformed into an outdoor cinema, which again can be experienced not only by the travelers but also by the people living in Tangier. A fractured, broken window onto life in the Medina is constructed on this roofscape, so that the travelers’ perception of Tangier, after wandering through the ‘vertical medina’, is shifted into a panoramic sensation over viewing the ‘horizontal medina’.