Conception and structure

The author of the project

The project of Riad Al-Uns was conceived and developed by Pietro Siffi, who bears its intellectual responsibility and has written its programme, its internal rule and its doctrine for the building site. The design phase is carried out by the association Il Fondaco Siciliano — Associazione per le arti e i mestieri, under Italian law, of which he is the president.

The three stages of the structure

The undertaking will pass through three successive structures, each proper to its phase, and they must be distinguished, since a patron’s contribution does not go to the same entity depending on the moment at which it is consented.

The design falls to the association Il Fondaco Siciliano — Associazione per le arti e i mestieri. The acquisition and the works will be conducted by a consortium or a company formed for that purpose, which will carry the site to its completion and will be wound up with it. The house itself, once restored, will be held by an association under Moroccan law, whose governance will be settled with competent counsel and which is intended to receive the walls and to guarantee their destination.

This succession separates what must end from what must last. A building site has a term, and the structure that conducts it must be able to be closed once the accounts are rendered; a school has none, and the structure that carries it must be conceived to outlive those who founded it.

What is asked of the legal form

The property is meant to be placed outside commerce, in the form Moroccan law will allow, so that the purpose of the house ceases to depend on the intentions of whoever owns it. The arrangements are being studied with Moroccan advisers.

One point nonetheless, since it governs the financing: the property will remain capable of being mortgaged for as long as the debt contracted for the works is not extinguished, and will enter the inalienable perimeter only afterwards, by a separate deed. A house that cannot be mortgaged cannot be financed, and a house that can be sold cannot be endowed. The order of operations resolves the contradiction instead of denying it.

What protects the house beyond persons

That the house remains, in fifteen or thirty years, what it was supported for is guaranteed by the statutes of the entity that will hold the walls, with at least four provisions:

A narrow object. The object of the association will be defined restrictively, and may not be widened.

Inalienability. A clause will forbid the sale, the transfer and the change of destination of the building.

Entrenched articles. A closed list of articles, including the two preceding, may be amended only by a reinforced procedure.

A guaranteeing body. Without power of management, it will hold a veto over the disposal of the building, the amendment of the object and the dissolution.

These are instruments of ordinary law, and they have this in common: none of them supposes the presence of any particular man.

Continuity beyond the founder

The answer must lie in the statutes rather than in intentions. The project is today carried by a small number of people, and that dependence is real; it is also ordinary at this stage of any undertaking of this nature. What will bring it to an end is the constitution of the Moroccan entity, the installation of its governance and the transfer of the walls. Until then, every document that binds the house records this dependence, and every patron is informed of it.

What can be verified

The statutes of the entity that will hold the walls will be communicated, once settled, to any person who has supported the house or considers doing so. The accounts of the works will be rendered to those who financed them. The register of the firms and craftsmen who have taken part, kept from the first day, will be open to their inspection. None of this is published, and all of it may be verified by those entitled to do so.

What is needed

Two needs of a different nature

A house of this kind has two needs that must not be confused, and that call for separate treatment, since they do not address the same people nor are they met by the same means.

The first is a need for capital, and it is settled once: acquiring the dwelling, restoring it according to the rules of the art, equipping the workshops, and holding enough to live through the first year before the house produces anything. This need is considerable, yet it is bounded, and once met it does not return.

The second is a need for income, and it is never settled: paying the masters, feeding and lodging those who learn, maintaining an old building, keeping the house in order. It returns every year, for as long as the house exists, and it is this need that decides whether the house will outlive those who founded it.

What is needed in order to begin

Before any acquisition, one must know whether the house can exist. This means finding the dwelling, securing its availability for the time required, having the condition of the fabric surveyed and establishing what it will allow, and obtaining from professionals in Fez the legal and technical opinions the operation calls for. It is roughly a year of work, and the only stage whose outcome is uncertain, since it may conclude that the house is not to be found, or not on these terms.

This first stage is also the only one in which the money committed may be lost without leaving anything behind. It is modest against the whole, and it is precisely the stage a clear-sighted support will fund first, because it buys the information on which everything else depends.

What is needed in order to build

Then comes the capital proper. The dwelling first, whether acquired or contributed. Its restoration, entrusted to firms of Fez working in the traditional techniques, over a span counted in years rather than months, for a site of this nature cannot be hastened without being spoilt. The services, which in an old house are concealed and cost accordingly. The equipment of the first workshops. And a reserve for the first year of operation, during which the house spends without yet receiving anything.

The amount is established item by item, with the ranges proper to a project whose dwelling has not yet been found, and it is communicated to those who consider supporting the house. It is not published here, since a figure displayed before the building is known would be a promise that nothing guarantees.

What is needed in order to last

The annual income is the real question, and the house does not claim to have resolved it entirely. It intends to answer it from several sources, none of which suffices alone and whose combination makes for security.

An endowment

In the legal tradition of the country, an income-bearing property (shops, a warehouse, dwellings) may be constituted as a perpetual foundation so that its revenue maintains an institution; it is thus that schools and libraries lived for centuries without depending on the generosity of each generation. An endowment of this kind settles the question instead of deferring it.

The work of the workshops

The productions are sold. The source is consistent with the vocation of the house, but it comes late, for those who are learning do not at once make what sells.

Hospitality

Stays and internships bring a real income, held by rule below the threshold at which the house would begin to arrange itself around its guests.

An adjoining activity

Distinct from the house in its accounts and in its walls, it is capped by statute at a fraction of annual resources, so that the house never comes to depend on it.

The forms of support

The house may be supported in several ways, and they are not all equivalent for the same needs.

In money, for the capital, at once or through a pledge over several years. By contributing a building in full ownership, which removes from the reckoning the heaviest and most uncertain item. By contributing a building in usufruct, which costs less to the one who consents to it, but leaves the walls with their owner and alters what may be promised as to permanence: it must then be said that permanence attaches to the institution and not to the building. Lastly, by constituting income-bearing property as an endowment, which is the most useful form of all, since it answers the need that nothing else covers, and which, for a family of the medina holding such property, commits less than a payment of equal value.

Each of these forms is received, and each is named for what it is. None opens a right over the house, over the admission of anyone, or over the conduct of the life led there: this point is written in the rule, and it holds for all.

The uncertainties

The dwelling has not yet been acquired

The project today bears upon a programme and not upon a building, and the search is conducted in Fez with the assistance of professionals who know the medina, its market and the usages attached to it.

Roughly a year is set aside for this work, before any commitment to build: inspection of the premises, surveys, legal opinions on ownership and on the authorisations. It is the only stage of the project whose outcome remains open, and it is designed for that.

An old building site does not follow the calendar

Restoring a dwelling of the medina according to the traditional techniques takes years rather than months, and the firms capable of doing so work at a pace that cannot be hastened without the work suffering for it.

The great restoration sites carried out in Fez over the past thirty years all confirm this. The timetable of the project is established on that real duration, and the house would rather open later than open badly.

The annual income calls for a lasting answer

A house of this kind is financed without excessive difficulty for as long as the matter is to acquire it and to restore it. What decides its fate is the expenditure that returns each year: the masters, those who are learning, the upkeep of an old building.

Its own resources contribute without sufficing alone, and by construction: the productions of the workshops come late, since those who are learning do not at once make what sells; hospitality is held by rule below the threshold at which the house would begin to arrange itself around its guests.

The answer is the constitution of an endowment of income-bearing property, according to the legal tradition of the country, whose revenue maintains the institution without depending on the generosity of each generation. It is the question on which a contribution is most useful, and the one the house wishes to settle early.

The masters are few

The men who still hold certain of these crafts in their old form are counted, in Fez, in single figures rather than in tens, and they are growing old.

This is the reason the house exists, and it is also what governs its timetable.

What is done before committing

No acquisition is concluded before the condition of the fabric, the regime of ownership and the required authorisations have been established by professionals of the place, and the provisions entered in the budget for uncertain works are calculated with prudence rather than to the nearest figure.

The financing will come chiefly from persons and families rather than from institutions, and both the timetable and the conduct of the project are established accordingly.

See also: Supporting the Riad→, At-Tadbir, the government→.