July 3, 2025
Salima Naji’s Quest to Preserve Culture Through Architecture
The heart of ancient cities in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco was often a granary, a communal structure in which grain, dried fruit, oil, jewelry, important documents, and other valuables were stored for safekeeping. But over the centuries, most of them have been destroyed due to earthquakes or deserted due to economic hardship, lack of natural resources to support the communities that built them, and migration to urban centers. And with them, traditional Berber culture and vernacular ways of building have been lost, too.
Salima Naji, an architect and anthropologist based in Southern Morocco, has spent the past 20 years restoring and reconstructing granaries and other ancient buildings in the region. In contemporary applications of historic preservation, a building’s physical appearance might remain the same, but its function changes to meet modern uses—factories transform into luxury lofts, a power station becomes a temple to contemporary art, and a public library finds a new life as an Apple store. Naji, however, treats historic preservation as a form of cultural repair and engages in projects that can continue to serve local communities in the way the buildings were intended. She prefers to build with natural materials like earth, stone, and palm fibers using traditional techniques. “For me, architecture is not aesthetics, but a respectful stance towards our earthly environments,” Naji says. “I want architecture in Morocco to meet the challenges of the ecological crisis and dwindling resources.”
Recently, Naji reconstructed the Fortress of Agadir, a critical civic building in the city of Agadir that was destroyed in a 1960 earthquake. Instead of using concrete—which crushed and killed people during the quake—she relied on a wood-and-stone system for seismic stability. She is currently reconstructing a school in Setti Fatma, a village outside of Marrakech, that was severely damaged in a 2023 earthquake. All of the masons working on the project are the parents of the students who will go to school there—a move that builds more connection between architecture, environment, and people and helps to keep these construction techniques alive within the community. This approach is shaped by the French philosopher Simone Weil’s theory on rootedness. “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. It is the hardest to define,” Weil wrote in 1943. Naji has taken this to mean that we as a society need more connection to our history, to where we live, and to each other, and architecture is a critical element of a cultural ecosystem.
While Naji’s projects are hyper-local, they represent a way of thinking applicable worldwide. She chooses to work on sites that were built and maintained collectively, were constructed with environmentally sensitive methods, and are resource conscious—in other words, what architects today call sustainability, but what builders were doing for generations before rapid urbanization and planetary destruction of the modern era. Naji believes that the field must adopt an alternative path forward to meet the interconnected crises of the climate crisis and social alienation. “Beyond the technical gesture, we need to question the conditions under which spaces are produced and inhabited,” Naji says. “True modernity is building with awareness, preserving the world, and respecting humanity in its environment.”
Recently, the architecture field has been catching up to Naji’s way of thinking. In 2022, she was shortlisted for the Aga Khan award and in 2024 was shortlisted for the Royal Academy of Art’s Dorfman prize. This year, she won the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture from the French building materials company Saint Gobain and presented her body of work at the World Around conferenceat the MoMA in New York. She hopes more architects join her in treating ecological architecture as an ethical imperative. “The first rule is to do no harm, to do no destruction, neither for ourselves nor for future generations,” Naji says. “To open horizons of dignity, peace, and harmony. It’s a difficult path, I won’t hide it from you, but these are the real challenges of tomorrow.” of tomorrow.”
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