THE DEVELOPMENT OF A GOLF COURSE JUST LIKE THAT!


Golf Course Designer, Jonathan Gaunt, gives us a fascinating insight into the design and build of a new course in Fes, the medieval capital of Morocco and home to Tommy Cooper’s hat.


The language barrier, flat location on a flood plain and redirecting a river were unique challenges for the whole team as Jonathan explains


I


n Spring 2006 I received an email from a Moroccan agent in Rabat who was commissioned by MEDZ (then called Maroc Hotels et Villages), a subsidiary company of CDG Groupe Developpement (Caisse et Depot et de Gestion), to put together a design team for a golf resort project in Fes, in the Middle Atlas region of Morocco. He’d got our name from a British golf course contractor who we’d worked with on numerous golf projects in the UK. We were asked to make a proposal in competition with a number of other well-known golf course architects who had worked in Morocco previously. Fortunately, we were chosen to


provide the golf course design work, even though it was to be our first project in Morocco, and my French being sketchy, to say the least. We were chosen, partly because of the


“British” connection, in that MEDZ could rely on us to provide a high quality, challenging golf course and, being a “British” design, the properties on site would be more attractive to Northern European investors. In late 2006 the Royal Oued Fes Golf


Resort project was given the “Royal” stamp by King Mohammed VI, a golfer himself - although not as keen as his father, King Hassan II, who was instrumental in getting a number of golf projects developed throughout Morocco during his reign in the 1980s and 1990s. It is one of many new leisure/touristic resorts scheduled to be built throughout Morocco since King Mohammed VI came to power. The bustling sprawl of Fes is most famous for its ancient walled city, which many compare to the walled city of Jerusalem. Fes is the medieval


capital of Morocco, and a great city of rich Islamic history and culture. It has the best preserved old city in the Arab world: the sprawling, labyrinthine medina of Fes el-Bali.


The first design workshop was held on site in Fes in April 2006. The design team included a specialist town planning/architects practice from Paris - Reichen et Robert et Associes (RRA), plus their representatives in Morocco - Mounia B Chaouni & Saâd Slimani Architectes (MBC&SSA) from Fes, plus a number of engineers who were already working on other MEDZ projects throughout Morocco. Masterplanning meetings were held


in Rabat in French, which made some aspects of the discussions difficult at times. However, we managed to develop a good understanding, particularly through drawings and the design work.


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