2023-09-10 10:46:28
Marrakech, like most large cities, presents buildings from very different eras side by side.
Buildings constructed in recent decades must have been designed according to anti-seismic standards.
“Since the 80s and 90s, all buildings have been built according to seismic standards” specifies Pascal Cohen. “Today in Morocco, we are obliged to submit structural plans when we want to build a building, whatever its size: a building, an individual house, a convention center, a museum or a conference center… We is obliged today to provide these guarantees to the authorities which issue building permits. They check all these plans and only give you authorization to build if these plans respect international anti-seismic standards.”
“We can no longer build a building in Morocco without it being earthquake resistant.”
The most recent buildings are therefore supposed to resist shocks better.
This is also the case for older buildings, designed at certain periods when there was a particular interest in construction materials and techniques: “everything that was built in the 50s and 40s, during the French Protectorate, is very resistant, it was of very high quality” comments Pascal Cohen. “L“The buildings that have held up well are those that were built in the 1950s, or in recent years.”
But other buildings, from other eras, do not have this resistance. There are buildings from the 60s and 70s, built quite quickly and with materials that are not always up to standard.
And there are very old and fragile buildings, especially in the small streets of the Medina, world famous. “These are very old buildings and maintenance is not necessarily done over time. And when a shock like Friday evening comes, we pay the price because we didn’t pay attention to this heritage.”
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