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Join on Telegram Marrakech – As Morocco races to overhaul its urban landscape ahead of the 2030 FIFA World Cup and a string of landmark international engagements, a gathering of the country’s top architects, engineers, and urban planners in Marrakech on Saturday called for a fundamental rethinking of how the kingdom designs, builds, and maintains its public spaces.
The second edition of the Ménara Préfa Scientific Day, held at the Four Seasons Resort under the theme “Sustainable Development in Morocco: From Concept to Operations,” brought together more than a dozen industry leaders to dissect the persistent challenges plaguing Morocco’s urban development pipeline – from ballooning costs and chronic project delays to the tension between modernization and the preservation of local architectural identity.
Organized by Ménara Préfa, the industrial arm of Marrakech-based Menara Holding, the daylong conference featured two expert panels, product showcases for the company’s Urbanmob urban furniture line and its Revetium exterior surfacing brand, and a B2B networking session that signaled the increasingly commercial stakes of Morocco’s urbanization drive.
Nadia Chaachou, Commercial Director of Menara Holding, and Hicham Zbidi, Deputy CEO of Ménara Préfa, set the tone in their opening remarks. Chaachou told attendees that Morocco’s exceptional momentum – driven by its growing international profile and the succession of major global events it will host – demands an urgent rethinking of how the country plans and delivers its urban spaces.
“Tomorrow’s development must meet several essential criteria: sustainability, the integration of smart technologies, and the capacity to endure over time, while guaranteeing optimal use of resources and a better quality of life,” she said, adding that technological innovation must never come at the cost of national identity.
Somewhere between the architectural renderings and the finished sidewalk, Morocco keeps losing time, money, and pieces of its own identity. For Chaachou, the path forward lies in projects that marry modernity and performance with the preservation of Morocco’s architectural and cultural heritage.
The first panel, titled “From Design to Execution: Where Do Delays and Cost Overruns Originate?,” carried that candor forward.
Panelists from firms spanning public transit agencies, engineering consultancies, and architecture studios – including SDL Agadir Mobilité, NOVEC, JESA, Arch Solutions, and Orange Atelier – converged on a single diagnosis: too many Moroccan urban projects suffer from inadequate preliminary studies, fragmented coordination among stakeholders, and a disconnect between what gets designed on paper and what ultimately gets built and used.
Placing people and heritage at the heart of every urban project
Basma Boujendar, an architect and project manager at Orange Atelier, told Morocco World News (MWN) that the panel – which traced the full life cycle of urban projects from design and planning through to on-site execution – succeeded in creating a rare cross-disciplinary dialogue among professionals who too often operate in silos.
“Among professionals and all the stakeholders – engineers, contractors, architects, and also clients – everyone brought in their point of view and experience,” Boujendar said. “The main key to designing a successful project, we agreed, is to place the human at the center of the design approach, or what we call human-centered design.”
Boujendar stressed that effective urban planning demands far more than aesthetic ambition. “It’s really important to listen to the needs of the user and also to consider the site analysis – economic, climatic, and social,” she remarked, adding that preliminary studies remain the single greatest determinant of whether a project stays on budget and on schedule.
The conversation turned repeatedly to questions of identity. Boujendar maintained that Morocco’s rapid modernization must not come at the expense of its built heritage, calling on practitioners to embed local character into every phase of the design process.
“It’s really a measure to respect the local identity of Morocco and the site we are working on, because it’s important to bring local character, to preserve heritage, and also to bring customized design according to the site,” she explained.
“There are many engineering solutions and architectural solutions based on innovative industrial processes that can be customized according to every site, enabling us to preserve the square, the garden, the walkway, or other urban projects for the next generations.”
She also made an environmental case, advocating for materials with low carbon footprints that simultaneously serve aesthetic purposes. “Materials that are eco-friendly, that can also be an aesthetic answer for the design made by an architect, considering the local, cultural, and architectonic details specific to the area we are designing,” Boujendar concluded.
Digital tools must drive Morocco’s next urban chapter
Mohamed Ali El Himma, founder of Integral Progress Technology and a specialist in information systems and organizational performance, pulled the lens back further. Speaking to MWN after the second panel on sustainability strategies, El Himma said the forum offered a rare opportunity for industry professionals to confront operational constraints head-on and map out actionable solutions.
“This was a day of genuine dialogue among construction and urban planning professionals to understand the real constraints the sector faces and to develop concrete solutions,” El Himma noted. He pressed for a comprehensive digitalization of Morocco’s urban governance infrastructure, arguing that artificial intelligence and data-driven management tools are essential to keeping pace with the country’s accelerating development trajectory.
“We need a plan for smart city governance through the digitalization of this sector – products, planning, engineering, and information systems all working together,” he pointed out. “Morocco is undergoing enormous transformations, from the 2030 World Cup preparations to countless other challenges, and the country is rising to meet them brilliantly.”
The event’s second panel, “Sustainability Strategy: Which Solution Choices for Sustainable Operations?,” drew participants from Chryso Saint-Gobain Maroc, Germany-based handling equipment manufacturer Probst, French joint sealant specialist Techniseal, and the Zenata Development Company, among others.
Discussions centered on material durability, lifecycle cost optimization, climate adaptation, and the maintenance challenges that hamper Moroccan public infrastructure long after ribbon-cutting ceremonies conclude.
The conference was backed by a tiered sponsorship structure reflecting the sector’s industrial ecosystem, with Holcim as the diamond sponsor, Chryso Saint-Gobain at the platinum level, and AtlantaSanad Assurance, Groupe AFMA, and Sika among the gold-tier partners.
For Ménara Préfa, the Marrakech-based precast concrete specialist founded in 2002 as a subsidiary of Ménara Holding, the event served a dual purpose.
The company, which has grown into an undisputed leader in the construction sector across the Marrakech-Safi region with between 500 and 1,000 employees, used the event for a dual purpose: to position itself as a thought leader in Morocco’s sustainable urbanization conversation while showcasing tangible product lines designed to meet the demands of a country building at breakneck speed.
The company has also secured state-backed funding to develop four innovative Made-in-Morocco products, including Ultra High Performance Concrete and Anti-Seismic Mortar, marking ambitions that reach well beyond its traditional precast business.
Whether the country’s urban planners can translate Saturday’s consensus into coordinated action on the ground remains the harder question – one that the next edition of this forum will inevitably revisit.
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