After extensive renovations led by Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni and her firm Aziza Chaouni Projects, the Qarawiyyin library in Fez, Morroco is set to open within this year. On September 19, The Guardian featured the restoration of the library in its "cities" section.

Located in the old Medina of Fez, the library is widely considered to be the world’s oldest and joins the Qarawiyyin Mosque and the Qarawiyyin University as significant cultural artefacts in the ancient Medina of Fez. Citing its large pedestrian network and immense collection of historic buildings within its walls, Chaouni considers the potential of the Medina to become a model for sustainability. Her firm’s renovation is one of the projects leading the current restoration of Fez as a spiritual and cultural capital of Morocco.

Chaouni approached the renovation with a philosophy of sustainable architecture. Writes Kareem Shaheen in The Guardian: “for Chaouni [this] means that the library cannot be a relic of ages past, but a breathing part of the city, much like the old medina is still an inhabited living organism.” Apart from structural work, the library’s renovation also included restorative work on the library’s collection of books and manuscripts that date as far back as the ninth century.

Having begun work on the library in 2012, Chaouni was inititally surprised by the appointment given that architecture is, as The Guardian writes, “a field traditionally seen as a man’s province” in Morocco. That said, the Qarawiyyin library was founded by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri, the daughter of a wealthy Tunisian merchant in the ninth century. Chaouni’s personal attachment to the library extends to familial ties. She tells The Guardian stories of how “her great-grandfather travelled on a mule from his ancestral village in Morocco to study at Qarawiyyin University in the 19th century.”

Chaouni has also drafted a plan to restore the river in Fez. For a more in-depth article, visit the article by The Guardian.