Commissioned by Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent’s longtime life and business partner—who died just a month before its opening in October—the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Morocco pays homage to the work of the legendary couturier. Located a stone’s throw from the Villa Majorelle, the couple’s Marrakech home, it occupies a cramped site in a zone where planning regulations restrict building height to just two stories. The architects, Studio KO (Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty), had no choice but to fill the plot up to its perimeter. The facade is almost entirely blind. This is because, on the one hand, the principal internal spaces—galleries for both the permanent and temporary exhibitions, a quarantine room for incoming objects, basement reserves, and a small auditorium for both concerts and lectures—require the exclusion of daylight, and, on the other, because Studio KO chose to echo the traditional North African house, which, hiding from the street, is organized around internal patios.

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