Traditional Building Techniques of the Drâa Valley (Morocco)

A field-research-based account of the rammed earth and adobe construction techniques used in the Drâa Valley villages of Tamnougalt, Tissergat, Amzrou, and Tamegroute. The paper documents the masonry techniques, the role of the maalem in directing construction without written plans, the customary oral agreements between mason and client, and the climatic intelligence embedded in the local building tradition — including the orientation of walls, the use of palm-wood roofs, and the adaptation of pisé thickness to seasonal temperature swings.

The authors record the disappearance of the technical knowledge as the master masons of the Drâa age out without successors. The race toward concrete construction, the lifestyle changes following the colonial and post-colonial periods, and the lack of new apprentices have produced a documented attrition of constructive know-how across the valley.

The paper is among the more methodologically careful contributions to the Drâa Valley earthen architecture literature. Its limitation, in common with most academic literature in this field, is its restricted distribution: it lives on ResearchGate as a preprint rather than in a publicly indexed journal, making it difficult for non-specialists or institutional readers to discover.