I Came For Couscous – issue 5

October 2024

Format: 210 × 275mm.
Periodicity: bi-annually.
Origin: France.
ISSN: 2825-8452.
Pages: 188 inside pages + cover.
Weight: 850g.
Printing: environmentally friendly papers, UV-LED printing technology.

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First Act
The first act begins with an interview with Lina Soualem, director of Bye Bye Tibériade, who opens the doors of her childhood holiday home in Palestine and shares her thoughts on collective family memory, transmission, and belonging. This is followed by personal accounts from architects, urban planners, designers, engineers, and researchers on what it means to be an Arab today. We then discover Beirut “Between shadows and light” through the lens of Serge Najjar, before concluding with an exchange between two luminous minds: Raafat Majzoub and Ammar Khammash, the architect who, tired of more formal discourses, offers us a holistic vision of architecture, one that posits it as an interaction between man and nature

Second Act
In the second act, Azim Haidaryan plunges us into a seemingly troubled landscape in his “Couscous Chaos” series. In this setting, the beloved dish of couscous inspires a dance of unity and solidarity and symbolizes a peaceful statement against the turbulence of today's world. Then, in Aït Othmane, a village in Morocco devastated by the recent earthquake, Myriam and Laurent from Archibionic unveil their temporary housing solution, the result of a community-minded mobilization operation featuring a construction kit presented exclusively in this issue. Finally, Khaled Osman regales us with a dystopian short story in which a man returns to Cairo after years of exile and discovers a futuristic city where modernity exists alongside excess and isolation.

Third Act
The third act brings us an encounter with a rising star: Franco-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh. Her vision encompasses an enlightened “archaeology of the future,” drawing on the vestiges of the past to design the sustainable, eco-responsible spaces of tomorrow. It continues with a panorama of refined miniature maquettes, ranging from the experiments of Hassan Fathy in Egypt to modernist solutions for the reconstruction of Agadir in Morocco, showing how these traditional examples of Arab architecture can provide new responses to global warming.

Fourth Act
In Act Four, we unveil the mysteries of the oases, as seen through a historical and ecological lens. Their existence, thanks to ancestral Arab hydraulic engineering, speaks of the fragile harmony between man and nature at a time when these historical treasures are threatened with extinction. Next, Brussels-based dancer and choreographer Radouan Mriziga weaves a dialogue between space, architecture, and the body in a quest for spirituality and identity, and offers us a profound reflection on dance, mythology, and age-old Amazigh knowledge.

Fifth Act
We close this issue with “market stories” in the heart of Casablanca's Central Market, a vibrant place, both universal and singular, seen through the eyes of two protagonists: journalist, artist, and theater director Fatym Layachi and photographer Hind Lahrichi, who both took up residence there for five weeks with artistic and, above all, humanistic intentions.