(traditional Moroccan music playing)
In 2011, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened new galleries
for its Department of Islamic Art.
As a curator, I knew our visitors would experience
extraordinary works of art
created over the last 1,400 years.
But we also wanted to give our visitors an experience
of space and architecture
and to show something of the living traditions
in the Islamic world.
The result is the Patti Cadby Birch Court,
a Moroccan court built inside the Metropolitan Museum
over several months in 2011.
It took a team of experts-- from curators and historians,
to designers and craftsmen, of course--
to make the Moroccan Court,
using traditional methods that go back to the 15th century.
Our work began with a journey to Fez.
The world has changed so much,
and traditional crafts are dying out very, very fast.
But to the credit of the Moroccan government,
they've taken this so seriously over the years
that they've managed to preserve,
in Fez and other centers, the traditional methods.
Being so close to the moment of creation is something
that has an incredible power
and is something that profoundly moves you as a curator.
In Fez there were 40,000 craftsmen.
We met with many, many guilds, many, many groups,
and we did find potential to work
with a number of different people.
However, when we met the Naji Family craftsmen,
run by four brothers and their father,
and then they have several workshops in Fez itself,
at one point Adil picked up Mohammed's hand.
He said, "Look, this is my brother's hand."
And we looked at that hand, and it was the hand of a craftsman.
It was rough and callused, and it had plaster all over it.
He'd been chipping away since the age of 14.
It was one of those moments when you just felt
this was the right partner for you.
ADIL NAJI: We are seventh generation in this business,
but for me and for my family, it is unlike any other project
that we have ever undertaken,
because this will serve as reference for scholars
to learn more about Islamic architecture.
NADIA ERZINI: I was employed as an art historian consultant
to the project.
I suggested having a Medieval style courtyard.
I have a very personal reaction to cut-tile mosaic, or zillij.
Morocco, North Africa, is burning hot
for so many months of the year.
Visually, it's such a comfort to see blues and greens
and cool colors evoking nature and gardens and water.
Perhaps it's because I grew up in a courtyard house
with traditional decoration, I can remember, you know,
walking barefoot on tiles.
In the Islamic city context, there is no façade.
Houses are all stuck together, the streets are very narrow.
The courtyard is the focus.
It's in fact the façade, but it's on the inside,
and it's very private, unless you've got access to it.
The Moroccan inspiration for the courtyard
is the madrasas of Fez, and they are perhaps the best symbol
of the intellectual and cultural life
of the Medieval Western Islamic world.
The madrasa was a resident for a student who formed
the backbone of the education and political life,
which will then serve to maintain the urban civilization
as they know it.
ACHVA BENZINBERG STEIN: As a designer
and a landscape architect, I deal with outdoor space.
When Avina came to me, she said, "Do you think we can do
a nice Moroccan courtyard?"
And I said, "By all means."
Most people who go to Morocco
and look at the Moroccan architecture,
they look at the court in terms of objects--
the beautiful tile, the beautiful wall.
But they don't look and see the space, the outdoor space,
and the meaning of the void and the mass.
You see how elaborate it is, but how simple it is.
HAIDAR: Traditional Moroccan architecture in general
consists of a pretty formulaic set of materials
that go from floor to ceiling.
There's usually a marble basin, tiled surround on the floor,
that extends into stone, and then you reach the walls,
and the walls have a detailed level of tile work,
followed by elaborate carved stucco work.
And then it goes and meets woodwork,
and after the wooden ceiling, it culminates
in a set of green roof tiles.
What precise patterns and designs and colors
do we put into this formula, and how do we adapt the scale
of these courts that usually go on for three stories
into our very intimate setting
without losing the spirit of the court?
ERZINI: What we've done is combine elements
from the madrasas and houses of Fez
and, from Islamic Spain, houses and palaces of Granada.
At that period, you can look at western Islamic world
as one cultural unit in craftsmen
which move around between cities.
So we looked at a tile panel from the Alhambra,
which was exhibited at the Met in 1992.
It's very bold.
HAIDAR: If we were to adapt the scale exactly,
we would end up with very big stars all over our walls.
And we found that in general, the scale in Moroccan monuments
is much smaller than the Alhambra patterns.
So the challenge was: how were we going to reduce
the width of that wide strapwork to make it
suitable for our scale?
The incredible thing we learned is that if you add
a millimeter of width to your wide strapwork,
your stars become huge.
If you take a millimeter away, they become small.
It's incredible how much effect the width of the strapwork has
on the overall pattern.
In the end, we were all in Morocco, in the workshop,
trying desperately to make this work out.
The craftsmen themselves wanted to make it smaller.
I was holding out for as much white as possible,
and not able to do it on the computer
we tried painting it on the wall,
we tried printing it out in various stages.
In the end, Achva Stein, our designer, took scissors
and cut pieces of starred strapwork out
and physically created a pattern to shown us how the scale
could be adapted.
It was a very Medieval solution in the end,
and it was a very, very exciting moment of the whole thing.
STEIN: You had to see the totality-- the shape,
the form, and the location.
When you look at the wall, you see there are
70 different distinct pieces
like a puzzle fitting into each other to create the design.
(music)
NAJI: We were working in Morocco for almost six months
in which we fabricated all the loose tiles for the zillij.
The wood was carved in Morocco out of cedar
from the Atlas Mountains of Fez.
We used some of the best wood carvers in the city,
and it was very difficult
in terms of the intricacy of the pattern.
HAIDAR: We were convinced that the only way we would do
this project was if the craftsmen actually came here.
(cars honking)
We wanted a direct relationship between the craftsmen
and the walls of our Metropolitan Museum.
NAJI: For us, we were transported
back to the year 1300.
It was clear to my team that we had to use only the elements
and the tools that have been used for centuries.
For instance, the plaster on the walls,
they were smoothing it with their hand.
When I look at this court, I see hands everywhere.
It's everything is touched by hands.
HAIDAR: The Moroccan Court exists in many contexts
in Morocco: in a domestic setting, in a religious setting,
and in a public setting as well.
The inspiration came
from all of these different types of courts coming together.
Without making historical reproduction,
we wanted to be historically authentic.
We had to do things very close to the original way.
So we had to scale things down very precisely so that your eye
wouldn't feel that things were wrong.
Your has to have a sense of complete harmony
when you look at these elements.
The government of Morocco for our project released
a special kind of stucco, which they don't normally export.
It's got a wonderful reddish hue.
And you see this reddish color in Marrakesh, particularly.
Through the process of carving, they have to keep it moist,
and it retains a soft and malleable quality
for months afterwards.
In fact, it's very fragile until it completely hardens.
What's incredible is that if you make a mistake
or you want to change something, you can just slap
some more plaster on and shape it and carve it.
It's got a kind of soft quality, and then at the same time,
it hardens just enough so that when you need to get
your chisel in there and make it into definite shapes,
you can do that as well.
Then they have a series of tools, some of them
as fine practically as toothpicks.
And with these tools, they apply themselves
to carving the surface of the stucco, based on stencil designs
that they have applied.
There is a movement to the whole nature of the carving.
They're able to create effects of leaves going over vines,
under other leaves.
They are extremely sculptural.
It's an arabesque almost in three dimensions.
NAJI: Living in New York for them was a challenge.
I took them on a tour of the museum.
And I took them to places to see what has been done before.
The routine for six months was Monday to Saturday,
and Friday we work until 3:00 p.m.,
and then they go sightseeing.
# You Got To Be Startin' Somethin' #
MAN: Everybody say, "All right."
ALL: All right.
MAN: Say, "Oh, yeah."
ALL: Oh, yeah!
HAIDAR: It's easy to recreate Medieval designs,
but difficult to get them in proportion
with the rest of the space and relative to the other elements.
We had to act with extremely high patience.
We had to do things very close to the original way.
In the old days, creation of these wall patterns
would have been done with a lime-based mortar,
then done directly on the wall.
But it burns through the skin and causes horrible injuries.
So what they generally do now
is create intricate mosaic tile pattern on the floor,
upside down, basically.
The surface of these shapes is colored, smooth, and brilliant,
but the reverse of these shapes has to be cut
into a particular beveled style so that they interlock well
with each other.
And then they pour into a concrete base mortar,
which allows it to get completely solid.
NAJI: We had to get some variation of colors--
for instance, three shades of blue,
there are two shades of green.
So it has the characteristic of an ancient antique panel.
HAIDAR: We matched the colors right back
to the authentic palette of the 14th and 15th centuries.
ERZINI: There seemed to be a standard type of ceiling
that was used for the madrasa courtyards of Fez.
We thought that worked because it was
so three-dimensional and exciting,
has those projecting corbels to really add a bit of life
to the surface.
Although of course we've had to miniaturize the whole thing
because we don't have much space.
STEIN: It's a completely different scale.
We needed to make the room in the proportion that will be
adaptable to human scale,
yet hint at the grand Moroccan Andalusian style.
NAJI: When the New York Times wrote about us,
they were carrying the newspaper with them every single day.
They became celebrities,
and definitely was giving them this fuel to go above and beyond
their capabilities.
HAIDAR: At certain points they actually departed
from the design because they were so inspired to do better.
Mohammed just said, "I'm going to leave the design aside
"and I want to do something for you
"that I've never done before.
"That's going to be freehand drawing,
based on a historical precedent."
They have to have mastery over the symmetry
and the geometry of these patterns,
and it's the interlapping, interlocking
of these simple forms that leads to the complexity
of the surface decoration that you see.
Very mesmerizing, actually.
No matter how stylized it is, there is an underlying logic
that does not break down.
That's an important part of the heritage
that they are keeping alive.
Most craftsmen all over the Muslim world tend to be Sufis.
Much of the work that they do
reflects a kind of devotional spirit.
For example, the craftsmen actually stylized
the veining of the leaves to reflect the name of God.
"Allah" in Arabic script is written essentially
in a series of vertical strokes, terminating in a rounded form.
Very understated element in the decoration,
but if you want to see it, it's there.
To acknowledge that these spaces and this work
has a spiritual dimension to it only enhances it,
and makes us understand how human beings are capable
of doing things that require such dedication.
ERZINI: I think it's wonderful that people can visit
a recreation of a Medieval Moroccan courtyard
without having to go there.
It is a real privilege for us as Moroccans.
NAJI: This place is a constant reminder of harmony
between two different cultures.
STEIN: The strength of the Moroccan design is to understand
the beauty of the simplicity of the Old World.
HAIDAR: The Moroccan Court will join a family of great spaces
in the Metropolitan Museum,
spaces that offer an area for contemplation,
that transport the visitor
to a completely different part of the world.
And to do this at the highest possible level
with the greatest sensitivity to the surroundings
and the masterpieces of the collection,
it's an historian's dream,
a chance to actually be part of the act
of creating something wonderful.