To imagine a unique zellige collection, the Aït Manos House reached out to designer Myriam Mourabit. Aït Manos, a worthy ambassador of artistic trades in Morocco, solicited designer Myriam Mourabit to create a collection of decorative objects and elements made from zellige. Keen on handmade work that she applies in her workshops, Myriam Mourabit delicately sheds light on Moroccan cultural heritage through her creations. Trained at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Appliqués and the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Myriam took a liking to materials and colors over the course of her studies. Fascinated by Moroccan heritage, she diffuses it with subtlety and harmony through her creations marked with minimal curves. Conjugating reinvented traditional references and a desire to go straight to the essence, her world is as untypical as it is recognizable.
Founder of the ZECUBE® design office, Myriam Mourabit strives to develop an identifying design marked by a sensitivity and spirit rooted in her cultural heritage. Her concepts revisit Berber iconography and the Arab-Andalusian heritage. 15-years in, Myriam Mourabit managed to make a name for herself in the neo-oriental design world. In 2013, the MYRIAM MOURABIT® brand was awarded the best design trophy at the Morocco Awards. Today, Myriam Mourabit has widened her field of investigation by proposing complete concepts with the desire of exporting a contemporary Moroccan identity.
Renowned for her remarkably refined creations, Myriam Mourabit promotes the alliance of design and arts & crafts. Zellige, the age-old traditional technique and a reflection of Moroccan crafts, is the spearhead of Aït Manos, who strives to magnify it through its creations, developing techniques that are both unique and forward-looking to simplify the laying of the tiles. The symbiosis of both approaches resulted in the PikZel collection, designed by Myriam Mourabit for the Aït Manos house and created by the Aït Manos Workshops. These creations were showcased at the Institut du Monde Arabe in 2016 and the Casablanca Design Week in October 2017.
A symbol of traditional know-how and of Moroccan ornamental sophistication, zellige, the age-old mosaic, is explored through its geometry by designer Myriam Mourabit. Marked with dark and light lines, Myriaam Mourabit’s work reveals the beauty and all the facets of zellige through a display of colorful hues.
PikZel, in the hands of Myriam Mourabit, reshapes Arab geometric layouts, structured and remarkable with the limitless possibilities that they offer. Revisiting her favorite zellige patterns, using an organized shading effect, through PikZel, Myriam Mourabit shades dark hues, such as black and chocolate into grays, anthracite, taupe, all the way to the more natural hues reminiscent of the Earth. PikZek is composed of identically-sized lozenge-shaped zellige, revealing a unique traditional Moroccan zellige graphic design. Punctuated by a positive / negative treatment of the graphic design, the zellige displays a pixilated pattern. A gradation of hues is added onto that, with darker tones below and lighter ones above to create an “organized” shading effect. PikZel currently comes in 2 shades. The first is a gradation of black that blends into warmer earth tone hues. The second is a gradation of blue hues. As such, for the second color palette, Myriam Mourabit chose a range going from navy to celadon, Carrara, lava, all exclusive enamels of the Aït Manos color range. To enhance the panels, a few golden leaf or chiseled silver lozenges pop out here and there. This unique technique, that is specific to the Aït Manos workshops, creates a contrast of textures and an embossed appearance that embellish the traditional graphic design. The same process is applied to the range of PikZel modular tables, which undergo a positive/negative treatment.