'Serai' - a place of rest for weary travelers
A Place to Grow and to Exchange Ideas
“This is a place without any pretension, where form follows function. First and foremost a family home, it’s a wonderfully personal place in which to be a guest.”
A Place to Feel at Home
“There is a joy in every detail here. I’ve been coming for years; I even built some bits of it myself. I can’t keep away, it inspires me so much.”
Espacios para eventos
The original vision behind the Serai was “an inspiring and visually compelling space for teachers of art, well-being and sustainable living to bring their students to”. We’ve gone completely out of our way to create an unrivalled choice of beautiful and original spaces for workshops, discussions, lectures, dance, etc.. It is ideal for intimate groups of up to 15 people.
El "Templo"
The ‘Temple’ is a beautiful space of 6m x 11m with a wooden floor of recycled beech wood. Light and views flood in through large, shaded windows to the East and West. Curtains ensure privacy if required, while the vaulted and muralled ceiling offers extraordinary acoustics.
The House & Around
The Serai was designed for groups, having indoor and outdoor stages, the vaulted saloon, an enormous flat roof, the sunset deck and front terraces. There can also be prepared spaces in the garden and previous groups have made much use of the beach, which at low tide is huge.
Habitaciones
Celebrando yesos de caliza natural y madera reciclada y desgastada por el tiempo, las habitaciones son sencillas y ordenadas. Grandes puertas de vidrio y ventanas ingeniosamente en ángulo llenan cada esquina de luz y recompensan cada mirada con una vista. Los baños de estilo hammam con ladrillos hechos a mano a la vista y ricos yesos de tadelakt le brindan una calidez profunda al espacio.
El Ala Norte
The Mezzanine Room
Accessed via the central courtyard, this room features a king-size double, or twin beds, and makes use of a higher ceiling to offer a mezzanine space for 2-3 children (or 1-2 adults), accessed by a spiral staircase. There’s an en-suite bathroom, and French window opening onto a south-facing patio.
Double / Twin Rooms
La biblioteca de la torre
This small reading room and library has the best views of any in the house and converts between a single, double or twin bedroom. There’s no en-suite bathroom but a compost toilet is there if needed and there are bathroom facilities downstairs. You can lie in bed and watch the setting moon paint a silvery street across the ocean, or on darker nights see the myriad lights of the Essaouira sardine boats twinkling like a line of stars on the horizon.
Habitaciones dobles / dobles con baño privado
Estas 3 habitaciones son similares en tamaño (26 m2) y distribución, y cada una ofrece una cama doble extra-grande (o dos camas individuales), baño en torreón y una ventana francesa que da a un patio orientado al sur. Sin embargo, la habitación SouthWest también cuenta con una enorme ventana francesa orientada al oeste que se abre a otro patio con excelentes vistas de la costa y el océano.
Relaxing Spaces
Interiores
The kitchen, dining room, hall, and saloon with its stage and tremendous vaulted ceiling, are all open plan but can be separated as required with sliding doors and curtains.
Exteriores
The courtyard is the beating heart of the Serai. Arranged on three levels beneath a natural roof of vines and honeysuckle, it features a natural plunge pool cleaned by a border of wetland plants. At the western end there’s a bar area and steps up to a roof terrace with more shaded and comfortable seating and breathtaking views.
Catering
Self cater in our fully-equipped kitchen or let our own wonderful and highly experienced cook, Amin, take the strain.
Also possible is a specialised chef from the local area.
See aquí for further information.
Breakfast on the kitchen patio, lunch beneath the dappled shade of the courtyard, dinner around the enormous banqueting table…; a choice of lovely spaces and views to compliment the delicious intimacy of eating together.
Sustainability?
We’re still working on this, and probably always will be. It’s not enough to donate 10% of revenue to the local community, or to have used as much as possible natural and recycled building materials in the build, or that we turn our waste and grey water into compost for soil regeneration, or even that the house is designed around rainwater catchment and storage; there will always be new ways to reduce our ecological footprint and to pro-actively benefit the local environment and community.
Agua, agua, agua
This part of Morocco is semi arid, bordering on arid. Average annual rainfall is a bare 15cms and Azrou Issa does not enjoy easy-to-reach groundwater. We do have a well but it produces very little each day, so the building is designed to harvest and store every possible liter of rainwater and then recycle as much of that as possible. We could buy in water, but that’s not a sustainable solution to the problem, so instead we use our reserves very carefully indeed, especially through the long summer drought. We ask that guests respect and remember this whenever they go to turn on a tap or take a shower. And whilst there are flush loos in all the bathrooms we also ask guests to consider using instead our beautiful vermi-compost toilets. To live sustainably in an environment such as this it is vital to ‘close the loop’ and feed back into the soil as much as we can.
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