Legendary architecture
The superb expanses of the Mauritanian desert bear witness to a fascinating prehistoric funerary architecture. The stone alignments, the most complex of which can be up to 3 rows cleverly arranged, stand alongside astonishing necropolises, such as the one at the Lembetet el-Kbir site. The latter, which rises 40 m above the reg, houses 160 tombs of various shapes. On the rocky outcrop and down to the plain, we find circular or rectangular tumuli, while the summit and the top of the rocky slopes are home to funerary monuments with more elaborate forms. The bazinas or step tombs, circular in shape, are made up of 3 concentric courses. The funerary chamber itself is placed in the center and is built in corbelling. The body of the deceased is placed on a slab serving as a floor, or directly on the ground. The site also shelters barkhanes, vast heaps of stone which, as their name indicates, take a shape reminiscent of a crescent of sand. The opening between the two branches of the largest barkhan reaches 27.60 m. The burial chamber is composed of a circular structure made of roughly matched quartzite blocks. In other parts of the Sahara, adventurers and archaeologists have also discovered chouchet (plural of choucha), funerary monuments composed of a tower with the appearance of a chimney and regular circular bases whose general shape recalls the rim of a well. The Saharan desert is also home to incredible remains of large Neolithic villages, such as Chebka, elongated, Akreijit, fan-shaped, and Tijot, circular plan. All three are characterized by a dry stone architecture, a honeycombed layout of the habitat and a narrow network of alleys and public squares. The most famous is the site ofAghrijit discovered by the no less famous Theodore Monod. Delimited by a wall 2 m high and 1.5 m thick, the village is composed of a series of alleys leading to open spaces intended for large public gatherings. The dry stone enclosures, generally rectangular in shape, serve to delimit several housing units organized around a central hearth. Akreijit also has cattle pens and fields on its periphery, which are delimited by stone blocks. These Neolithic agropastoral communities have thus imagined a functional urbanism whose main principles will be taken up again over the centuries!
Fascinating Middle Ages
Now a major archaeological site, Koumbi Saleh reveals the splendor of the city that was the first capital of the Empire of Ghana and that saw the development of an exceptional architectural art, made notably of a unique use of local schist slabs. From the descriptions that the great travelers of the time made of the city, we retain that the capital was composed of two distinct entities: the city of the Muslims, which housed no less than 12 mosques, and the city of the king, with buildings built of stone and acacia wood and a vast fenced palace. The space separating the two entities was occupied by wooden huts of circular plan. The remains of the animist monument and the great mosque are without doubt the most spectacular of the site. Another amazing archaeological site not to be missed is the cultural landscape ofAzougui, the first capital of the great Almoravid dynasty. From the original oasis, where the city was built, still remains the very ingenious irrigation system. It is in the heart of this fertile oasis that the Almoravids built a dry-stone fortress whose surrounding wall protects an urban block arranged in different concessions.
But the most famous medieval sites of Mauritania are of course the ksour of Chinguetti, Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata, all classified as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Founded in the 11th and 12th centuries, these cities were both important caravanning and trading centers and powerful cultural and religious centers. The ksar is a fortified village protected by a wall and whose urban fabric, very dense and tight, consists of narrow and winding passages leading to a large public square and collective spaces, while the houses, arranged in a very compact way, are generally huddled around the mosques. This compactness has a practical function, allowing protection from the wind, sand and heat, and a symbolic function ensuring the application of the principles of asceticism and deprivation of Saharan Islam. The other main characteristic of these ksour is the way they blend into their environment. The use of local materials (sandstone with gray, green or red reflections; ochre clay used as cob, adobe or banco) ensures a visual coherence with the surrounding desert landscapes. Made of dry stones and left bare, or covered with a plaster or an ochre cob, the dwellings are also massive and compact, often with cubic volumes. Their rare openings are protected by interlacing wood or wrought metal, while their roofs, usually flat, are made of a clever arrangement of trunks and branches of palm trees or date palms ensuring protection and ventilation. These houses are organized around a courtyard or an interior patio. Chinguetti is famous for its large mosque topped with 5 ostrich eggs and flanked by a square minaret, its dozens of libraries and its houses made of stone and banco covering protected by massive acacia doors. But it is Oualata which shelters the most beautiful residences. In Sudanese style, these multi-storey houses are built around a large central courtyard, hidden from view by baffles and are characterized by a dry stone structure entirely covered with red or ochre clay plaster that the women decorate with arabesques, interlacing and geometric motifs painted with their fingers. Decorated with nails and elaborate knockers, their wooden doors contribute to the beauty of these houses.
Colonial era
Colonial architecture is primarily a defensive and military architecture. Compact and massive volumes made of stone and mud bricks, square or rectangular plans organized around central courtyards, corner towers, bastioned and projecting elements characterize these desert forts. In the north of Mauritania, the purpose of the forts was to watch over the nomadic tribes. The most famous forts are the Fort Aïn Ben Tili and the Fort of Chegga with its impressive portal flanked on both sides by four domes and its crenellated ramparts of an ochre tone that make it almost invisible. This desire to blend into the environment is found in the forts of the Adrar. Fort Claudel in Chinguetti and the forts of Bir Ziri and Agoueidir are among the most interesting. Originally, Nouakchott, the capital, was also only a military camp. In 1959, the French architect André Leconte drew up a new urban plan for the new capital, dividing it into two nuclei: one around the original fort and the other around the mosque. At the same time, the French built small mining cities where simple volumes and concrete are king. This is the case in Cansado, where you can still see the remains of a very modernist hotel, or in Zouerate, which alternates between large white European-style buildings and small red brick houses reminiscent of French mining towns.
Since independence
The effervescence of independence was accompanied by a kind of construction fever. State structures were standardized and prefabricated, with the preferred housing being simple cubic housing blocks reminiscent of large European-type complexes, but generally not exceeding three floors. Since the 1970s, the city of Nouakchott has experienced unprecedented growth due to a massive rural exodus. As a result, the city saw the development of innumerable informal settlements known as kébbés. The latter are the urban translation of the delicate transition between traditional agropastoral lifestyles and imported urban lifestyles. Many settled farmers and nomads prefer this informal character to standardized architecture, as the kebbes allow them to retain the structure of the enclosure delimiting different functional spaces, with the kitchen always separated from the living spaces, and housing shacks made of odds and ends and traditional tents. Faced with the increase in these "shantytowns", the authorities launched a few construction programs, such as that of SOCOGIM (Société de Construction et de Gestion Immobilière) which, in 10 years, built 12,000 homes and allocated nearly 16,000 plots of land to promote controlled housing... but this program was far too modest to curb exponential growth. Faced with these failures, some kebbes have become gazras, legalized informal settlements with better access to infrastructure, all of which reveal the urban drift of a city created ex-nihilo, which has never had an official land registry and whose urban plans have never been put in place due to funding problems and corruption. In addition to the problems of space saturation, there are major environmental threats. The city has developed in the shelter of a dune line that the port infrastructures have modified the marine currents and are constantly destabilizing; the structures built directly on these dunes are showing signs of great fragility. Faced with these threats, a new SDAU (Schéma Directeur d'Aménagement et d'Urbanisme) has been set up for the year 2040. The objectives are to densify formal neighborhoods, restructure and equip informal neighborhoods, and abandon unsuitable sites while protecting the environment, in particular through a sustainable urban mobility policy. In terms of architecture, the Lycée Théodore Monod extension/rehabilitation project is a good example of what the capital could aim for on a large scale. Designed in harmony with the rest of the French Embassy campus where it is located, the school has a reinforced concrete frame covered with a fine coating and dressed with ashlars from the Attar region, while the interior is protected by elegant concrete sunbreakers. For thermal insulation and waterproofing, the architects were inspired by a traditional technique based on the use of shells combined with sand. The whiteness of the materials allows for significant reverberation of the sun and thus prevents the roof from heating up. Combining tradition and modernity is the key!
Vernacular richness
In the desert plains of the Sahara, some communities, including the Fulani, live in thatched dwellings. Resembling domes, these dwellings consist of a framework of millet stalks on which are placed lattices of woven reeds. This structure is then covered with layers of thatch sewn together. The doors are often low to protect against the desert, while small openings allow constant ventilation. This wooden framework is found in the tikit, huts of the Tuareg villages with woven palm roofs. In the heart of the Banc d'Arguin National Park, fishermen have built small flat-roofed cubic houses with beautifully colored walls, but many of these fishermen are actually sedentary nomads who have never abandoned their traditional habitat: the tent or khaima. In large urban centers, these tents can even be found on the roofs of houses or in courtyards. In the heart of the desert, these tents are most often made of white cotton or black animal skins (among the Tuaregs, the skins are completely stripped of their hair before being sewn). Their solid framework system, designed to support several layers of fabric, consists of a central mast, a ridge beam and uprights stretched by ties attached to ropes, themselves stabilized by stakes in the sand. With the exception of the glad al khaïma, a decorative collar placed on the top, sobriety prevails on the outside, while the interior is the object of all the decorative attention with wall carpets and cushions. In Nouakchott in particular, it is the women who are in charge of making the tents. They buy various colorful fabrics on the markets and sew them solidly in elaborate geometric patterns reminiscent of patchwork.
