AGADIR AGUELLOUY, COLLECTIVE GRANARY IN AMTOUDI, PROVINCE OF GUELMIM | salima naji

Alerted by the inhabitants in November 2014, I thought Agadir n'Uguellouy d'Amtoudi was definitively condemned: the south-east and west facades having imploded under the effect of water pressure. Id Issa suffered little because it was built on the wider rock. Since the violent rains had washed away part of the masonry, I was very worried that we would have a lot of trouble getting everything back to normal, but it took nearly five months to get the building out of the water. We are now finishing the waterproofing.
Everything has been reworked, from the foundations to the cornices, with wooden "keys" on certain corners, and stringers here and there to distribute the loads. No expense was spared despite a modest budget. A visit every week for the first two months, then every 10 days, this type of work can only be conceived over time by being serial, demanding and supportive. Because we will have to think about making these restoration actions even more sustainable, and that is my commitment this year, not just the rescue of an architecture that is by definition alive...
Because what is worrying this year is the lack of project managers. The maalmines do not want to make any more efforts and want to go directly to the current mediocre techniques (in cement) and do the bare minimum. In a site that I know by heart and where I have worked since 2002, it was necessary to find the right craftsmen, to demand, and then to follow up in a very tight way. However, they had asked for real wages and I had granted them, with pleasure. The state has not taken the measure of this loss. I have said this several times in the press, to officials, at decentralised meetings, and no one seems to care. For me, who has a long experience of workcamps, I can see that our maalmines have grown old and that they have not been taken over... This was not true in 2007. Now, 8 years later, it's too late and the cement has spread everywhere. And with the people I've known for 15 years, we've discussed the fact that it's an old building, but that we've grown old too. That it should be anchored even more in the long term... We have to recognise that the maalmines are ageing and that the know-how is withering away due to a lack of real knowledge of the issues at stake in the COMPETENCE OF EDIFICATION. We must act quickly, while there is still time. 

Project started in 2003-04 with our own funds. Resumed with Agence du Sud in 2007. Then saved again after the torrential rains of 2014.