Maison Nalos

Maison Nalos is a seven-room riad in the Medina of Marrakech that has adopted the visual grammar of 1970s design as its organizing sensibility, an unusual decision for a riad that pays off in the consistency it produces between the architecture of the old building and the objects placed within it. The combination of earthy Moroccan craftsmanship and the warm geometric design language of that decade creates interiors where the two vocabularies are in genuine conversation. An indoor swimming pool provides the aquatic element, a solution suited to the compact scale of a riad building and to the privacy that seven rooms implies. A bar and terrace extend the social spaces of the property for the hours when the courtyard's light changes quality in the late afternoon. The riad's location in the Medina places it within reach of the Mouassine Mosque and Fountain, the Secret Garden, and the Mouassine Museum, a cluster of the old city's most significant sites that can be visited on foot before the heat of the day establishes itself. Balcony views look onto either the pool or the inner courtyard, the choice between the two levels of access constituting the main distinction between room types. Maison Nalos is a property where the design decision to work from a specific decade's visual vocabulary, rather than the generalized idea of a Moroccan riad, produces rooms that read as composed rather than assembled, the objects and surfaces in alignment rather than in coexistence.