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The architecture and urban design practice of OUALALOU+CHOI considers the architectural project as a means of negotiating complex situations, however foreign or obscure.
Founded by Linna Choi and Tarik Oualalou, the office’s work exhibits a wide range of scales, typologies, and contexts that serve as investigations as much about exploring given project constraints as about questioning the limits of the design profession. Adamant that architectural strategies should be integrated into a project long before and after the conventional intervention of architects, the studio’s international and multidisciplinary composition enables it to forge meaningful relationships within client and project teams, creating a dialogue that respects and examines cultures, customs and methods employed, in order to achieve a stronger design solution.
Such a commitment gives rise to the office’s ability to create an insightful, relevant, and poetic architecture, one marked by its volition to contribute enduring designs for our land, city, and waterscapes. Going beyond the mere topics of form and function, the architecture sought by O+C is as immaterial as it is meaningful.
The practice’s most significant works include the Volubilis Museum, the Cultural Center of Morocco in Paris, the United Nations COP22 Village, the Campus for the World Bank/IMF Annual Meeting in Marrakech, the Morocco Pavilion for EXPO 2020 Dubai, and the FLIJ tent constructed on the plaza of the Arab World Institute in Paris.
With offices in Paris and Casablanca, O+C’s current projects include the Grand Stade de Hassan II in Casablanca for the World Cup 2030, the Embassy for Thailand in Rabat, the U.S. Consulate in Casablanca, and the Abattoir Cultural Complex.
Numerous exhibitions have showcased the studio’s work, most recently in Paris, Casablanca, London, and Copenhagen.
In 2017, O+C published a monograph, “Territories of Disobedience,” which critically examines a body of work spanning more than fifteen years.
