The Ksar are fortifications which were stored in the crops of wheat. Everyone had their own room and in turn were guarded.

 

The Ksour are made up of a series of small chambers ,called ghorfa, one top of one another.

 

 

Simple building system and very few materials are used to built the Ksour. They are spontaneous constructions and their shapes depends on what they are used for. 

Every Ghorfa belongs to one member of family clan, normally 2m wide and 5m long, with a barrel vault.

 

 

The vault are made of stone held together with low quality motar. The scaffolding used to build themis made of woven palm leaves and help up by sacks of grain. 

As it isn't stable, the shapes of the Gorfa vary and are always different. The arch supporting the barrel is never a semicircumference. The impost is not visible and the hightest point of the arch is not always at the center of the room.

 

 

Every Ksar has a record ofhow it was built, the hands who made it, the sand that covered it, the few things it contained.

 

These places are completely absorbed by che colours of the earth, they are secret places gone astray.

Nalut - Libia 2010

Nalut - Libia 1932 (nota1^)

A bond between man and architecture that clearly points to a spatial order and a rational geometrical system that identifies man and nature, thereby creating a stable centre rooted in the complementary relationship between the man and the earth, bearing witness to the vitality, but also the fragility, of rural civilisation.

And despite its collapse and ruins, the memory of these places shelters a hidden truth whose evocative power has reached us intact, down to the centuries.....

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2010 Pierclaudio Duranti