Who carries the project
Who answers for this undertaking, with what structure, under what oversight, and what secures its continuity beyond the persons who willed it.
The author of the project
The project of Riad Al-Uns was conceived and developed by Pietro Siffi, who bears its intellectual responsibility and has written its programme, its internal rule and its doctrine for the building site. The design phase is carried out by PSPM Srls, a company under Italian law of which he is the director, remunerated for this work on terms communicated to anyone considering support for the house.
The three stages of the structure
The undertaking will pass through three successive structures, each proper to its phase, and they must be distinguished, since a patron’s contribution does not go to the same entity depending on the moment at which it is consented.
The design falls to PSPM Srls. The acquisition and the works will be conducted by a consortium or a company formed for that purpose, which will carry the site to its completion and will be wound up with it. The house itself, once restored, will be held by an association under Moroccan law, whose governance will be settled with competent counsel and which is intended to receive the walls and to guarantee their destination.
This succession separates what must end from what must last. A building site has a term, and the structure that conducts it must be able to be closed once the accounts are rendered; a school has none, and the structure that carries it must be conceived to outlive those who founded it.
What is asked of the legal form
The property is intended to be placed beyond commerce, in whatever form Moroccan law will allow, so that the destination of the house ceases to depend on the intentions of whoever owns it. The arrangements are under study with Moroccan counsel, and nothing will be promised here that is not yet decided.
One point nonetheless, since it governs the financing: the property will remain capable of being mortgaged for as long as the debt contracted for the works is not extinguished, and will enter the inalienable perimeter only afterwards, by a separate deed. A house that cannot be mortgaged cannot be financed, and a house that can be sold cannot be endowed. The order of operations resolves the contradiction instead of denying it.
What protects the house beyond persons
A patron is entitled to ask what will prevent this house, in fifteen or thirty years, from becoming something other than that for which he will have supported it. The answer lies in the statutes of the entity that will hold the walls, and these will provide at least four dispositions.
A narrow object
The object of the association will be defined restrictively, and may not be widened.
Inalienability
A clause will forbid the sale, the transfer and the change of destination of the building.
Entrenched articles
A closed list of articles, including the two preceding, may be amended only by a reinforced procedure.
A guaranteeing body
Without power of management, it will hold a veto over the disposal of the building, the amendment of the object and the dissolution.
These are instruments of ordinary law, and they have this in common, that none of them supposes the presence of any particular man.
If the founder stops
The answer must lie in the statutes rather than in intentions. The project is today carried by a small number of people, and that dependence is real; it is also ordinary at this stage of any undertaking of this nature. What will bring it to an end is the constitution of the Moroccan entity, the installation of its governance and the transfer of the walls. Until then, every document that binds the house records this dependence, and every patron is informed of it.
What can be verified
The statutes of the entity that will hold the walls will be communicated, once settled, to any person who has supported the house or considers doing so. The accounts of the works will be rendered to those who financed them. The register of the firms and craftsmen who have taken part, kept from the first day, will be open to their inspection. None of this is published, and all of it may be verified by those entitled to do so.