Wall Restoration in Fez, Morocoo

When we arrived in Fez, Morocco it was something I never expected. It was completely different then any place I have ever been too before. A good different though, because it was something that I have never seen before.

Inside the city it was completely opposite of our cities back home. Instead of having the decoration on the outside of buildings, they put it on the inside. So when you are walking around the city all you really see is blank walls with doors. Inside those doors though, there are beautiful palaces. You would never expect this though because there are not really any windows looking in from the outside. The only natural sunlight comes from above. It comes into the interior courtyard that most houses in Fez have. In all of our rooms there were windows but they faced into the courtyard and there were none facing to the outside. A very different feeling, but something very nice to see.

Instead of looking how the pavement was made I looked more into how there walls were made. One instance was looking at the old city wall which they were repairing.

At the pictures from the left it shows how they are repairing the old wall. Here they mix limestone and sand, kind of like our concrete. The wood planks are holding up the newly restored wall. The holes in the wall are used for ventilation because without ventilation in the walls the wall would collapse.

Another thing that was interesting about the making of walls in Fez is there Tiles and Mosaics. Here they use poured cement, then the tiles are put in place, it is dried, and then once completely dry it is lifted and put in place on the wall.

Also in Fez they have very decorated ornamentation on the walls. Here they carve into the plaster on the wall which is still soft. This plaster is made with marble dust and egg white. Both of these can be seen on the bottom left picture.

Gaudi's Paver Stone

For Spring Break my parents and my sister came and visited. One day we went and saw three of the Gaudi buildings in the city. We first went to Sagrada Familia, then Casa Mila, and lastly Casa Batllo. On the way to Casa Batllo I noticed the pavement that Gaudi had created was on the sidewalk. It was under construction so I was able to see how the tile was put into place.

The Sketch to the right shows how this is done and with what materials. First they lay down a concrete slab, then stone dust is used, followed by the paver stone on top.

The very interesting thing about this paver is that it is not ordinary. It is not just a plain rectangle or square. The paver stone is actually a hexagon and there are 3 different sea creatures on them.

The pavement is arranged so that there is half of the sea creature on 2 sides, so that whenever lined up with the other pavement it automatically finished the sea creature. This is seen in the picture below.

As you can see the sidewalk was under construction and this is how they were repairing it and adding in the new tiles.