The uncertainties
What, in an undertaking of this nature, is not settled in advance, and the manner in which these questions are handled before they become difficulties.
The house has not yet been acquired
The project today bears upon a programme and not upon a building, and the search is conducted in Fez with the assistance of professionals who know the medina, its market and the usages attached to it.
Roughly a year is set aside for this work, before any commitment to build: inspection of the premises, surveys, legal opinions on ownership and on the authorisations required. It is the only stage of the project whose outcome remains open, and it is designed for that.
An old building site keeps its own pace
Restoring a house of the medina according to the traditional techniques takes years rather than months, and the firms capable of doing so work at a pace that cannot be hastened without the work suffering for it.
The great restoration sites carried out in Fez over the past thirty years all confirm this. The timetable of the project is established on that real duration, and the house would rather open later than open badly.
The annual income calls for a lasting answer
A house of this kind is financed without excessive difficulty for as long as the matter is to acquire it and to restore it. What decides its fate is the expenditure that returns each year: the masters, those who are learning, the upkeep of an old building.
Its own resources contribute without sufficing alone, and by construction: the productions of the workshops come late, since those who are learning do not at once make what sells; hospitality is held by rule below the threshold at which the house would begin to arrange itself around its guests.
The answer is the constitution of an endowment of income-bearing property, according to the legal tradition of the country, whose revenue maintains the institution without depending on the generosity of each generation. It is the question on which a contribution is most useful, and the one the house wishes to settle early.
The masters are few
The men who still hold certain of these crafts in their old form are counted, in Fez, in single figures rather than in tens, and they are growing old.
This is the reason the house exists, and it is also what governs its timetable: every year without transmission is a year in which a maalem grows older without having transmitted, and in which a young man goes away without having received anything.
What is done before committing
No acquisition is concluded before the condition of the fabric, the regime of ownership and the required authorisations have been established by professionals of the place, and the provisions entered in the budget for uncertain works are calculated with prudence rather than to the nearest figure.
The financing will come chiefly from persons and families rather than from institutions, and both the timetable and the conduct of the project are established accordingly.