Morocco Mall Luxury retail centre Start Date: May 2008 | Completion Date: June 2010After working together on projects such as the Turin Olympic hockey stadium, our Milan and Madrid offices are designing Morocco’s first luxury shopping centre. The two have joined forces again on the Morocco Mall, undertaking structural, mechanical, electrical, fire and facade engineering design.The mall will be built on a formerly undeveloped area on the south side of Casablanca and will provide 185 000 m2 of retail and leisure space including an IMAX cinema, restaurants and shops.The elegant retail centre developed by Design International Architects for Al Amine Investissement Immobilier, a joint venture between Aksal and Nesk, two large Moroccan franchise and fashion operators, is being designed by Arup.Arup’s scope includes structural, mechanical, electrical and public health engineering, as well as fire and façade engineering. Our project scope only includes the 185,000 m2 shopping mall. This retail centre will become a reference not only as a luxury shopping venue in North Africa and Southern Europe, but as an avant-gardes design, including a zinc façade and glazed domes. The mall, which features four glass domes, is half a kilometer in length and is located less than 20 meters from the Atlantic Ocean. The Moroccan climate and the local winds which can reach 120 km/h for up to one week per year is a design challenge for Arup, both for the structural and building services designs.The architect's design for a large open space with natural light through glazed domes is a key driver for Arup's design approach. Allowing for a flexible structural design, whilst designing for efficient energy usage and maintaining comfortable interior conditions for users was a key goal for the client and for Arup."We had to make sure we could achieve good quality construction with the technology available locally. So a small factory will be set up on site to produce pre-cast units, speeding up construction", explains Maurizio Teora, Milan office director."The building services design was challenging because of the severe Moroccan climate. We had to find ways to control the environment inside the building as sustainably as possible. The client wanted a lot of glass but we undertook studies to show that we could get enough light into the building with less. We also used shading and improved the UV values and overall performance of the glass."Construction of the Morocco Mall has just begun, with explosives being used to blast a two-storey basement depth 500m long and 80m wide in the solid rock. Work on the building is due to be completed by June 2010http://www.almazar.com/accueilOthers coming up for Fes & Tangier in 2010 ,all we need is our credit cards !//en.yabiladi.com/topics/shopping-malls-morocco-44-3177781-3177781.html#msg-3177781 Fri, 05 Jun 2026 23:36:50 +0200 Phorum 5.2.15 //en.yabiladi.com/topics/shopping-malls-morocco-44-3177781-6053638.html#msg-6053638//en.yabiladi.com/topics/shopping-malls-morocco-44-3177781-6053638.html#msg-6053638 mariamsimple Morocco # English board Wed, 19 Feb 2014 11:48:48 +0100 //en.yabiladi.com/topics/shopping-malls-morocco-44-3177781-6027494.html#msg-6027494//en.yabiladi.com/topics/shopping-malls-morocco-44-3177781-6027494.html#msg-6027494 Alys1607 Morocco # English board Sun, 02 Feb 2014 16:08:42 +0100