The Fobe House in Marrakech, Morocco, is strikingly contemporary. At first glance, it’s all starkness and contrasts, a cascade of sharply-angled white structures speckled across an arid landscape. Infinity pools, floating terraces, and a mysterious neon glow are all present, each detail adding to the disparity between modernity and the home’s surroundings—really nothing, save the Atlas Mountains at the horizon.

But that’s just the work viewed at a glance. Architect Guilhem Eustache, who was commissioned for the project by a Belgian filmmaker, feels the more traditional influence of the Mediterranean and the Berbers, as well as the punishing sun of the North African countryside. White rooms, imposing ceilings, thick but simple walls, water basins, and moucharaby—windows of latticework in place of traditional Western shutters—are components characteristic of this region, where privacy and protection reinforce one another, and they’re present here.

But Eustache’s technique is not traditional. He adds, rather than subtracts, beginning with a landscape and adding one structure after another. The Fobe House is not a single house, but a series of private residences speckled with supporting structures, including a guard house, outdoor totem fireplace, garage, and pool house. On a functional level, they support one another, but the æsthetic distinction is not subtle. “The possibilities are endless and the interpretations—depending on the number of volumes, their individual forms and their respective placements—are infinite,” he says. “This leads to a great variety of interiors and exteriors where each pillar, wall, and ceiling can be viewed as distinct interacting volumes.”

The result is almost experiential. At the border of the property are earth-colored walls two meters high. Pass through them, and you enter a new world, one in which regional tradition meets technology. “The Fobe House is not born from purely æsthetic concerns, nor is it solely the result of adapting to the surrounding environment,” Eustache says. “I could list our motives for each structure, each architectural choice, and each detail, but it makes more sense to say simply that our architectural choices evolved organically as the project advanced.” The process, in fact, is ongoing, with what Eustache is calling the “square house” and the “village house” still underway. This expansion will only reinforce the Fobe House’s almost deceptive simplicity.

Even indoors, where inspiration was pulled from visits to regional farmers’ houses—“I felt that I was discovering minimalism in its purest state,” Eustache says—there’s almost no decoration. “It’s simply the architecture that is put forth,” he says. The result, he continues, is that “some architecture has a strange ability to change our perception of space and our way of moving through it. It can bring us closer to lifestyles that are inherently closer to nature.”

House in Tassoultante, Morocco – design by Guilhem Eustache studio, architects

18 Jan 2012

Fobe House

Tassoultante, Marrakech, Morocco

Design: Guilhem Eustache studio

Photographs: Jean Marie Monthiers

Jean Marie Monthiers (one of the most important architectural photographers from France) died during the night between 16th and 17th of January 2012.

Marrakech House

Improving the quality of life has long been my professional creed, where the core value is space rather than the object. A demanding personal commitment to clean space and well lit volumes. By changing axes and heights, alternating the empty and full, creating a balance of masses, generating light, superimposing surfaces and varying scale, I seek to create a dialogue between these elements in order to compose a complex and singular space to serve the user. To do so, I emerge myself in the project – accompany and carry it – unrelentingly seeking inventive and generous solutions.

photos © Jean Marie MONTHIERS

MARRAKECH, MOROCCO | THE FOBE HOUSE

A client introduced me to a film producer in Belgium. He offered me to draw up the plans of several houses on land he had bought in Marrakech, Morocco. For many years I regularly visited Morocco. From the first trip I was bewitched by that country and the three projects studied to date are certainly fed, to varying degrees, by all the images and impressions gathered during my stays.

The main difficulty was to define the program with the client. Originally we had planned to build three houses on this site. The project gradually decreased to finally the smallest of these three houses in order to preserve the field. The client informed me he bought a second larger plot (5 hectares) under the same conditions but closer to the Atlas in order to implement the other two houses.

For this first project my desire was to establish a close dialogue with the land, vegetation and the atlas to the horizon. Being a small house of 170 sqm on a plot of 2.5 hectares, we had to create a dynamic equilibrium despite this difference of scale. We played with light and shadow to enhance and strengthen the volumes. We used local materials and techniques like clay for the exterior walls, tadelack for the baths and stones from the Ourika valley for the floors. We have preserved the wildness of the land although we have planted more than 500 trees. We doubled the walls to help deal with the climate, creating room high-rise and sun protections. Each region and country deserves architectural answers, adapted in line with requirements climatic, cultural and economic conditions.

photos © Jean Marie MONTHIERS

THE FOBE HOUSE

The land is located about ten kilometers south of Marrakech. Flat, mostly drowned under a heat veil that hides horizon. It is only from December to March that the snowy atlas appears In this 2.5 hectares area the buildings occupy only 240m ². The volumes and their arrangments permit to avoid a floating effect in this empty space. Before discovering the layout we first need to go along the clay walls, which remote the neighbors away while allowing the sight of whites geometries. Once we cross through the metal gate , earth tinted, we are suddenly plunged into a strange world. Three white steles frame and seek the longitudinal axis of the house in the center of the field. On the right side, the Guard house, two mixed cubes, is close to a totem fireplace and faces the double garage all in length studded with small openings. These simple elements articulate the vacuum around and focus the eye towards the house itself.

photos © Jean Marie MONTHIERS

Paradoxically simple and complex: a foliation of longitudinals sails between wich stages the project program; tall windows; sets of geometric cutouts; framing, especially from the livingroom across the pool and its bleachers toward the atlas.

Fobe House under construction:

photo © Guilhem Eustache

Fobe House – Building Information

Program: House
Location: Tassoultante, Marrakech, Morocco
Adress: village of Tassoultante / Amizmiz road – 9.2 km from Marrakech
Completion: 2007

Project areas:
Private residence: 171,96 sqm
Guard house: 20,20 sqm
Garage: 35,08 sqm
Pool house: 13,12 sqm
Total: 240,36 sqm on 2,5 ha
Plantations: 23 olive tree, 10 palm, 450 eucalyptus, 200 mimosa, 20 fruit trees

Commisioner: private, Belgian film producer
Architect: Guilhem EUSTACHE (Born in Nîmes / south of France)
Moroccan correspondent: Hicham BELHOUARI, architect / Marrakech / Morocco
Photographs: Jean-Marie MONTHIERS

Guilhem Eustache

photo © Ian Scigliuzzi

‘Find the bases of architecture / place the individual at the core of the project’

After graduating in 1986 from the Architecture School of Paris (l´Ecole Spéciale d´Architecture de Paris), my projects in France include day care centers, a school, the renovation of a private residence as well as several lofts and apartments. I´ve also worked with a Belgian film producer on a series of projects in Marrakech and more recently in Brazil with a house all in curves. Improving the quality of life has long been my professional creed, where the core value is space rather than the object. A demanding personal commitment to clean space and well lit volumes. A singular universe to be seen and understood. By changing axes and heights, alternating the empty and full, creating a balance of masses, generating light, superimposing surfaces and varying scale, I seek to create a dialogue between these elements in order to compose a complex and singular space to serve the user. To do so, I emerge myself in the project – accompany and carry it – unrelentingly seeking inventive and generous solutions. Constant in my choices and orientations, my projects are inscribed in the continuity of a tradition that responds to the demands of both the environment and society. Respecting the local context without succumbing to folklore, a quest for lasting simplicity.

Fobe House site plan: