Assistant Professor Aziza Chaouni's Fez River project was the centrepiece of a recent article on the GOOD website, an online community of "pragmatic idealists working towards individual and collective progress". The article is written by Shelley Hornstein, Professor of Architectural History & Urban Culture at York University whose work focuses on architecture, memory and place. Chaouni's project in the Moroccan city of Fez reflects this idea of an urban site being revitalized and renewed, spurred by a memory of how it used to be.

The Fez river, which runs through the third largest city in Morocco and is also Chaouni's hometown, once provided over 200 water sources and was considered the lifeline of the city. Over time, however, residents and commercial owners began using the river as a dumping site for toxic chemicals and sewage. What was once considered the "City of a Thousand Fountains" was soon better known as the "River of Trash".

In order to hide the offensive smells and sights of the river, the government decided to pave over top of the waterway, installing roads and parking lots directly above it. However, in 2004, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, which had previously designated the area in which the river flowed as a World Heritage Site, demanded that the concrete be removed. So, in 2008 Chaouni's former office Bureau E.A.S.T. (now Aziza Chaouni Projects) created a sort of "outdoor living room" to allow for people to reclaim the river and its banks as the integral backbone of the city. According to Chaouni's website, the project "is a strategic plan that addresses not only the ecology of the river but also the social and economic concerns of the city." The next phases of the Fez River Project will include a playground with terraced wetland plantings as well as the relocation of a large tanning facility which uses the river as a dumpsite to an industrial zone outside of the neighbourhood.

To learn more about the project, visit Aziza Chaouni Projects and to read the full article, go to the GOOD website.