Hotel Gourara, Timimoun

1. «The predominant presence of the oasis and of the dunes governs the relationship of the hotel to the site, to all its parts and to each element. The plan of the building is designed in the shape of a horseshoe; this shape helps determine a relationship between the building and the surrounding landscape. The rooms fan out, from the inside towards the outside, on the surreal surrounding spectacle all around. The terraces of the inner garden are arranged around a small canal which starts from the pool above. The exterior terraces and the entire building lie on the hillside, completing it».

2. «When you go somewhere, you want to find out what has existed in that country, so when I tackled hotels and tourist complexes (I hate this word), I felt something and I said to myself: “I will bring my girlfriend into a brick theatre, I’ll show her what Islam is, the country…”. Since there was nothing left here of the magnificent city of Algiers, of the magnificent city of Constantine, nothing except for the carcasses of buildings, I decided to build real villages on the edge of the sea, which could have been inhabited by the local people in a more or less remote epoch, to make people dream, because this what it’s all about, to make the tourist dream. I managed to do research in the old houses of the casbah, which sometimes were even transported and rebuilt at the edge of the sea; I was able to make transpositions, architectural marriages of contemporary and historical or archaeological elements, and I must say that it is neither fun, nor easy, but sensitive; it is a sensitive way of dealing with tourism. […] In tourism, in my opinion, one is not free, one must make it a duty to make people dream».