Crafting Luxury with ‘More-ish’
Qualities at the YSL Museum:
An Organic Approach
Annette Condello
Abstract Today, what is organic within architecture enables local craftspeople to
acquire new expertise. Studio KO’s Yves Saint Laurent Museum (2017) in Marrakesh, Morocco, is imperative for understanding the relation between sustainable
luxury and local craftsmanship. The construction fortifies fashion with the environment as well as local brickwork traditions. For the architects, horizontal layers
of textured brickwork resemble a textile weave and become a constructed cultural
entity. This chapter traces the ‘more-ish’ qualities, defined herein as causing one’s
impulse to create handsome foci (as opposed to the Moorish, which is culturally
based), inherent in the YSL Museum from an art-architectural perspective within
the sustainable luxury context. It explores the display of the camouflaged Berber (or
Amazigh) textile within the building’s facades and interprets its ‘more-ish’ qualities of luxury through its spaces. Analysing Howard Risatti’s ‘theory of craft’ [42]
and Richard Sennett’s idea of craft ‘as an enduring, basic human impulse’ [21], this
chapter explains why the bricks-and-mortar structure and zellige (hand-made) tiles
have literally and metaphorically regained value through craftsmanship in the luxury sector. It discusses how traditional brick-laying techniques and their unexpected
connections have transformed the desert built environment and speculates why these
changes inform adaptive reuse practice as a ‘more-ish’ organic approach. In this
respect, in discussing the brickmaking as a form of crafting luxury the process has
cultivated a bonding or ‘tuning-in’ tactic, important in understanding sustainable
Moroccan culture.
Keywords Organic architecture · Sustainable luxury · Berber textiles · Studio
KO · Brick technologies · Recrafting Amazigh culture
1 Introduction
‘Fashion was a craft, a poetic craft’
[41, p. 20].
A. Condello (B)
School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
e-mail: a.condello@curtin.edu.au
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
M. Á. Gardetti and I. Coste-Manière (eds.), Sustainable Luxury and Craftsmanship,
Environmental Footprints and Eco-design of Products and Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3769-1_7
129
Qualities at the YSL Museum:
An Organic Approach
Annette Condello
Abstract Today, what is organic within architecture enables local craftspeople to
acquire new expertise. Studio KO’s Yves Saint Laurent Museum (2017) in Marrakesh, Morocco, is imperative for understanding the relation between sustainable
luxury and local craftsmanship. The construction fortifies fashion with the environment as well as local brickwork traditions. For the architects, horizontal layers
of textured brickwork resemble a textile weave and become a constructed cultural
entity. This chapter traces the ‘more-ish’ qualities, defined herein as causing one’s
impulse to create handsome foci (as opposed to the Moorish, which is culturally
based), inherent in the YSL Museum from an art-architectural perspective within
the sustainable luxury context. It explores the display of the camouflaged Berber (or
Amazigh) textile within the building’s facades and interprets its ‘more-ish’ qualities of luxury through its spaces. Analysing Howard Risatti’s ‘theory of craft’ [42]
and Richard Sennett’s idea of craft ‘as an enduring, basic human impulse’ [21], this
chapter explains why the bricks-and-mortar structure and zellige (hand-made) tiles
have literally and metaphorically regained value through craftsmanship in the luxury sector. It discusses how traditional brick-laying techniques and their unexpected
connections have transformed the desert built environment and speculates why these
changes inform adaptive reuse practice as a ‘more-ish’ organic approach. In this
respect, in discussing the brickmaking as a form of crafting luxury the process has
cultivated a bonding or ‘tuning-in’ tactic, important in understanding sustainable
Moroccan culture.
Keywords Organic architecture · Sustainable luxury · Berber textiles · Studio
KO · Brick technologies · Recrafting Amazigh culture
1 Introduction
‘Fashion was a craft, a poetic craft’
[41, p. 20].
A. Condello (B)
School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
e-mail: a.condello@curtin.edu.au
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
M. Á. Gardetti and I. Coste-Manière (eds.), Sustainable Luxury and Craftsmanship,
Environmental Footprints and Eco-design of Products and Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3769-1_7
129