Yassine Rachidi is a multidisciplinary artist and PhD candidate in Urban Studies at the University of Basel. Splitting his practice between the academic and the artistic, he questions - through writing, photography, and filmmaking - the emerging materialities, temporalities, and spatial identities that unfold through processes of construction, speculation and adaptation on the African continent. 

Down to Earth, the current research project he is developing as part of the G3S PhD start-up grant, looks at the reconstruction efforts of the 2023 Haouz earthquake in Morocco, exploring the tension between adequate housing strategies and the lived realities of local Amazigh communities; particularly how questions of materiality, tradition, and state-led planning strategies intersect in the making of post-disaster architecture. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, which considers building materials as both products and producers of urban space, his research engages with rural vernacular construction techniques not as residues of the past, but as carriers of future potential - what we could refer to here as ‘rural futurisms’ or ‘paleo-innovation’ (Naji, 2019). By examining earthquakes beyond their natural aftermath, his research explores the tensions produced by the reconstruction efforts unfolding in the Haouz and how they mirror deeper conflicts between vernacular spatial practices and Morocco’s 2030 modernization agenda. More specifically, his research situates post-disaster reconstruction as a contested terrain marked by the entanglement of sustainable development, heritage preservation, and adequate housing strategies.

Website: https://yassinerachidi.com/

• Morocco