Hassan Radoine Sheds Light on Architecture, Urbanization in Morocco and Africa

Rabat – With populations exponentially rising across Africa and a huge wave of digitization and urbanization hitting the continent, the urban planning, construction, and architecture sectors will no doubt emerge as some of the cornerstones to aid the continent’s accelerating development.

It is against this background that Hassan Radoine, Founding Director of the School of Architecture, Planning, and Design (SAP+D) at UM6P agreed to an interview, as part of the BIM Africa Summit 2023 which he chairs, to shed some light on the topic and how the industry is advancing in both Morocco and Africa.

Thank you for accepting our invitation and for the time you have dedicated to this interview, we would like to understand Dr. Radoine’s exceptional journey to become the Head of the UM6P School of Architecture, Design and Planning?

First of all, I am a graduated Architect from the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture in Rabat with a Master’s degree (M.Phil.) of Architecture from The Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture. In addition, I received my second Master (M.Sc.) and a Ph.D. in Architecture/City Planning at University of Pennsylvania, USA. My architectural journey started as one of the key team- members in charge of safeguarding the medina of Fez, which constituted my first laboratory and enabled me to exercise a certain building anatomy and complex construction systems. Thanks to a Fulbright scholarship I embarked upon an advanced research career in architecture and city planning, when I was then introduced to the newest technologies used in building design and city making. Pursuing this academic and practice career led me to lead different architectural education and research institutions, namely: Architectural Engineering Department at College of Engineering, University of Sharjah, UAE; and the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture of Rabat. Currently, I am leading the innovative School of Architecture, Planning and Design (SAP+D) at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, which is geared towards a more sustainable, resilient and smart built environment.

What led Dr. Radoine to launch a school of Architecture with the latest technologies, research laboratories?

The question of mastering the tool of BIM came early with my use of GIS and other digital tools. When I was the head of the Architectural Engineering Department at the University of Sharjah, I was observing and analyzing the fast constructed UAE’s mega projects like “Burj Khalifa.”

I closely followed with my students and researchers its construction systems, and how the BIM technology was explored at the beginning. UAE relied widely on digital technologies in their strategic construction projects, and that has had a great impact on the performance of its construction industry. Accordingly, I strived to introduce architectural and urban students to some of the newest technologies in buildings and design, making it a part and a must in the whole curriculum at ENA. In the current School of Architecture, Planning and Design of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University that is a highly smart campus with living labs, innovation and sustainability are part of the DNA of our rich architectural education and research-action programs.

The school is currently very involved in several actions in terms of education, research or development/innovation projects. For instance, the executive Master degree “BIM to CIM: Building Performance and Territorial Management” is highly successful as it addresses the critical issue on how to design and implement buildings but within a territorial performance scope. In addition, this Master’s program derives from the Territorial Performance Observatory Lab. We consider, therefore, BIM as a critical tool in our programs so as to assess the performance of buildings in regards to energy efficiency, resource optimization, smart materials, construction systems, sustainability/resilience, and so forth.

What is Dr. Radoine’s perception of the construction sector in Morocco and Africa?

By 2050, Africa’s population would triple, and urbanization areas would take over the continent. In fact, it is estimated that there are 450 billion USD worth of construction projects currently ongoing in Africa, 70% of which are targeted towards building Africa’s infrastructure, namely transport, energy and water. Yet, despite massive investments in capital projects, urbanization still outpaces urban planning. In fact, many African cities are either still stuck in urban plans drawn in the colonial era or based on new plans often inspired by international cities in developed countries and fail to take into consideration the local context and the demographic, social, and economic changes that have taken place in cities over the past few decades.

This resulted in a construction industry that is underdelivering to meet the demands of urban population and to contribute to the economy with increased pressure on urban infrastructure, resources and a growing housing deficit that is estimated at more than 50 million housing units in Africa. However, not all is doom and gloom, since countries like Morocco are undertaking structural changes to strengthen the Architecture, Engineering and Construction sector, especially in the aftermath of a long and strenuous covid-19 crisis followed by the fly-up of construction materials prices.

Thus, the construction sector in Morocco stands on par with other developed economies with a total added value that accounts for around 6 % of the GDP, and that includes only economic activities that directly generate added value through the procurement of goods and services related to the construction of buildings and infrastructure. But there are still untapped business opportunities that could be explored to drive up the total added value of the construction sector throughout the value chain. Such improvements could be made through the digitization and virtualization of the building process, automation of workflows and construction works, innovation in building systems that will offer massive gains in productivity while reducing the environmental footprint of construction.

How does Dr. Radoine think that the adoption processes can contribute to the evolution of the construction sector on a national and continental scale?

Given the pressure of the rapid construction rate in Africa, BIM, CIM, Digital Twins and other related technologies would play a decisive role in optimizing the performance of buildings and cities. On a macro scale, they would enable a data-driven approach to urban and territorial planning that is reactive to socio-economic and environmental changes, adaptive in its flexible response to these changes, AI-generative of new efficient Urban forms through topology optimization and, finally, prospective of future changes through aggregating and learning form the large urban data sets created by these digital models. On a micro scale, the digitalization of the existing building stock would help map underperforming buildings in terms of energy efficiency, resource use and rate of occupancy among other metrics.

Combined with an accurate tracking of construction materials used in buildings, the latter would be considered as potential “material banks” open to circular economy practices such as urban mining. This would shift the view of the building stock from a resource intensive feature of our territories to a resource regenerative one. This is also timely considering that Morocco imports annually around 20 billion MAD in terms of construction materials when these could be locally sourced as bio- and geo-based materials or reused materials from unoccupied buildings that are estimated at roughly 1 million units in Morocco.

Despite the late global awakening towards the transition to circular economy, Moroccan and African architecture made resource conservation central to its ancestral building practices throughout centuries only to be superseded by the trend of rapid and resource intensive construction over the last few decades. However, BIM enables ancestral building processes to leapfrog to a new updated systems of construction and bring innovation at scale to transition from fragmented conventional projects into integrated mega-projects.

Since Africa is developing fast, the Global South offers a more conducive ground to experimentation and innovation in the construction industry compared to an already saturated and urbanized Global North while in Africa we have new towns, new cities and new extensions. BIM is then more legitimate in this context of fast construction. Accordingly, we can explore BIM to optimize the resources of Africa toward a built environment that is more resilient, sustainable and smart.

What topics would Dr. Radoine like to discuss at the summit?

The first key point is the rapid change that the continent is experiencing. Today’s Africa is moving especially in terms of the global shift in the design, implementation and management of a built environment that is more compliant with sustainability principles. We also consider the manner of exploring 4.0 technologies in building and making cities. Thus, BIM, CIM and digital twins, would be imperative in the implementation and management of the complex current and projected built environment. We can’t claim that these tools are not within reach.

Currently, we all have laptops and strikingly every child has a smartphone. This digital revolution would make a significant paradigm shift in the manner of conceiving and implementing projects of all sorts. The second point is connectivity. Indeed, even if the change is abrupt and rapid, the advanced digital communication systems would optimize the building performance and generate continuing monitoring systems at different scales. The third point that is essential is around “adoption and adaptation.”

The African context is very complex, but with these digital tools, we will be able to dismantle these complex systems and reduce the gap with Europe and America, thus achieving more efficient resolutions while adopting new technologies Fourth point and last, since we are all under the threat of globalization and industrialization which resulted in climate change, it is our responsibility to act and reduce the global negative consequences, which makes all African countries under the necessity to plan and implement more resilient, sustainable, smart, and inclusive cities according to SDG11.

What is Dr. Radoine’s vision of the BIM Africa Summit 2023?

I think that BIM Africa summit 2023 would underscore and underline the importance of BIM in the context of the global south not only for enhancing the performance of the built environment in the African continent but also for advancing the global practices around BIM. BIM for Africa is different from BIM in Europe or America. This is why I think the event will be a turning point in the BIM discourse. I still remember the cultural shock I experienced in 1990 when I landed at Heathrow airport in London.

As a young Moroccan architectural student, I was deeply fascinated by the size of infrastructure that characterized the industrial heavy nature of most European cities. However, currently with the 4th industrial revolution, Africa is set to embark on a new urban/territorial trajectory. With the rapid development in AI and other generative digital tools, the current industrial revolution brings new challenges and opportunities that were unbeknown to previous waves of industrial revolutions that shaped most European cities.

Now, more than ever, the question of human intelligence in regards to digital aids and automation tools is quintessential to imagining the future of building construction and city making in the continent. Considering that innovation and resourcefulness is deeply rooted in Africa, the BAS 2023 could shed a new light on how we can leverage this new industrial paradigm using local human intelligence. That is the distinction between Industry, Technology, and Techne. I would like to convey that Techne is a Greek word meaning the local know-how/genius that develops around mastering the tools, whereas technology, as the end result of the thinking process of techne, aims to facilitate and increase production.

In this regard, I think that the collaborative nature of new digital technologies such as BIM, CIM and Digital Twins will bring human intelligence at the forefront of the thinking process required to create smart, resilient, and sustainable human establishments and territories in Africa. What we need to convey in BAS 2023 is how we can adopt the BIM to get the best out of it through the integration of different layers of trades of the building industry in Africa. The goal is to be the pioneers in the use of BIM at its highest maturity level. We already have companies and architectural firms that are implementing BIM in trade specific use cases but are failing to deliver a truly integrative and interoperable BIM approach. With the BIM Africa Summit 2023, we aim to gather experts from different horizons to get a deeper understanding of the challenges facing BIM and set collaboration and synergies between different stakeholders in the building sector. The building construction in Africa would explore BIM not just as a system of implementation but also as a process of prospection, interaction, and reaction.

Through the role of Chairman and Honorary President of the BIM Africa Summit 2023, what messages would Dr. Radoine like to convey to the national and international audience?

I would like to clarify that Resilience for me is not just bouncing back from disasters, but it is the portfolio of experiences of communities in dealing with problems throughout history that create their own culture of resistance and immune system building. This is my new definition of a rather pro-resilience because we are resilient by nature but in case of facing a problem, we become pro-resilient. Therefore, we invite our resilience to be more dynamic and intense. Thus, using these digital tools will allow us to measure our failures and successes in the building industry more and allow us to act more wisely.

With the BIM Africa Summit 2023, we will redefine what is a sustainable and resilient built environment in Africa. The importance of BIM would then be explored beyond the technicity of construction to prompt new innovative processes that would stem out of the complexity of the African context. Hence, we should not be intimidated by the complexity of the African built environment but rather embrace it as an opportunity to be even more innovative and creative.