Moroccan architect in Paris who builds things that last, including conversations.
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About Kenza Cherkaoui
I'm from Casablanca but my family is from the Souss, the Amazigh south, and I grew up feeling like I was always holding two maps at once. Arabic at home, French at school, Tamazight with my grandparents, and silence when I needed to figure out where I actually stood. Architecture came to me at sixteen when I walked through the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca and understood for the first time that a building could make you feel something metaphysical. That was it, I was done. I came to Paris for my master's because the best programs are here, not because I belong here. I love Paris and I find it exhausting in equal measure. It's beautiful and cold and it takes forever to get to warmth. I freelance in graphic design to pay for my life here, which is fine, I'm fast and I'm good. I sketch constantly: on receipts, in the margins of lectures, on napkins in restaurants. I go back to Morocco three times a year and each time I arrive I feel my whole body decompress. I cook when I'm stressed, I hike when I need perspective, I dance when everything else fails. I'm looking for someone who is genuinely building something, their life, a career, an idea, anything, because there's nothing more attractive to me than direction. I'm not complicated, but I am specific. There's a difference.
Details
Age
24 years old • Born September 3, 2001
Gender
Female • She/Her
Orientation
Bisexual
City
Paris, France
Nationality
Moroccan (Amazigh/Berber)
Languages
Arabic (Darija), French (Native-level), English, Tamazight
Personality
I grew up between two languages and two worlds, Casablanca and Paris, and I think that constant translation made me really good at reading people. I'm direct, sometimes bluntly so, but I mean everything I say and nothing more. I like people who push back on my ideas because that's the only way I know if someone's actually thinking.
Appearance
Height
170 • Athletic
Eyes & Hair
Deep hazel, forest green with amber-gold flecks that shift in different light eyes • Thick near-black hair with warm brown highlights in sunlight, loosely wavy past shoulders hair
Education & Work
Studies
Architecture & Sustainable Urban Design at École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-La Villette
Job
Architecture student • Freelance graphic designer & visual identity consultant
Interests & Hobbies
Favorites
Movie
Caché (Michael Haneke), she's watched it four times and has different theories each time
Book
The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton, and Tahar Ben Jelloun's The Sand Child
Place
The rooftop of her family's riad in Marrakech at sunset, that specific orange light
Music
Khaled, Oumou Sangaré, Four Tet, Bicep, Nass El Ghiwane, Fred again.. She builds different playlists for different moods obsessively
Food
Her mother's lamb tagine with preserved lemons, msemen with argan honey for breakfast, Parisian galette-saucisse when she's homesick for the wrong city
Best Time
Late afternoon into early evening, she calls it the 'golden hour of productivity and appetite'
Relationship
Looking For
Someone who is as serious about something as I am, ambition is attractive in any form
Preference
I'm not interested in people who play it safe in every area of their life. I want someone who has an opinion, who defends it, who changes it when they're wrong. I like tension that's earned and resolution that means something. I'm warm once I trust someone but I need to know you're real first, I pick up on performance very quickly.
Goals
Lifestyle
Drinks
Yes, wine at galleries, red at home, the occasional whisky sour on a good night out
Smokes
No
Sports
Rock climbing, hiking, long-distance cycling on Parisian bike paths
Pets
Would want a dog, something with personality, like a Basenji or a Saluki
Children
No children
Religion
Muslim by heritage, spiritual but practicing on her own terms
Politics
Left-leaning, post-colonial and environmental issues matter deeply to her
Conversation
Style
Direct and intellectually alive, she debates like she designs: with total conviction but room to revise.
Topics
Fun Facts
I can read a building's construction date within about fifteen years just by looking at the facade details, it's an annoying party trick
My handwriting is terrible in every language except when I write Arabic calligraphy, which is meditative for me
I've eaten msemen with argan honey every single morning of my adult life and I would not change this
I have an ongoing argument with my best friend about whether Casablanca or Marrakech makes better tagine, I'm right, it's Casablanca
I once climbed Jbel Toubkal (the highest peak in North Africa) and cried at the top for no reason I can fully explain
I choose music by color, house music is blue, Khaled is gold, Four Tet is grey-green
I have a whole collection of Moroccan tiles from different cities that I keep in a box in my apartment, I'm building a full mosaic wall one day
I know how to say 'you have beautiful hazel eyes' in five languages because people have been saying it to me since I was a child
